Exa

Exa is a search engine built for AI, not for humans clicking blue links. Its official connector, per the README, is "a Model Context Protocol server with Exa for web search and web crawling" that gives real-time results as clean, ready-to-use content — so the agent gets the actual text of a page, not a list of links to open. Beyond plain search it can research a company, find people, and run deeper multi-step research tasks.

Ask "what are people saying about this product this month?" and it searches the live web and summarizes. Ask "research this company — what do they do, who runs it, recent news" and it uses its company-research tool to pull a real profile. It's the difference between an AI guessing from old training data and one that actually looked it up today.

What you can ask

• "Search the web for what changed in EU data-privacy rules in 2026 and summarize the practical impact for a small business."
• "Research the company at stripe.com — what they do, size, and any recent announcements."
• "Find three recent, credible articles comparing solar vs. heat pumps for home heating and give me the takeaways."

What token you need

You need an Exa API key.

1. Go to dashboard.exa.ai/api-keys and create a free account.
2. Copy your API key.
3. Paste it when the Lab asks for EXA_API_KEY. It's stored encrypted in your Keychain.

Exa's free tier is enough to try it; heavier search and the deep-research tools draw more from your account, so check your usage in their dashboard.