Exa SDK Patterns Skill | Agent Skills

Exa SDK Patterns

Overview

Production-ready patterns for the exa-js SDK. Covers client singletons, typed wrappers, error handling, retry logic, and response validation for real Exa API methods.

Prerequisites

exa-js installed and EXA_API_KEY configured
TypeScript project with strict mode
Familiarity with async/await and error handling

Instructions

Step 1: Client Singleton

// src/exa/client.ts
import Exa from "exa-js";

let instance: Exa | null = null;

export function getExa(): Exa {
  if (!instance) {
    const apiKey = process.env.EXA_API_KEY;
    if (!apiKey) {
      throw new Error("EXA_API_KEY not set. Get one at https://dashboard.exa.ai");
    }
    instance = new Exa(apiKey);
  }
  return instance;
}

Step 2: Typed Search Wrapper

// src/exa/search.ts
import Exa from "exa-js";
import { getExa } from "./client";

interface ExaSearchOptions {
  type?: "auto" | "neural" | "keyword" | "fast" | "instant" | "deep" | "deep-reasoning";
  numResults?: number;
  includeDomains?: string[];
  excludeDomains?: string[];
  startPublishedDate?: string;
  endPublishedDate?: string;
  category?: "company" | "research paper" | "news" | "tweet" | "personal site" | "financial report" | "people";
  includeText?: string[];
  excludeText?: string[];
}

interface ExaContentsOptions {
  text?: boolean | { maxCharacters?: number; includeHtmlTags?: boolean };
  highlights?: boolean | { maxCharacters?: number; query?: string };
  summary?: boolean | { query?: string };
  livecrawl?: "always" | "preferred" | "fallback" | "never";
  livecrawlTimeout?: number;
  subpages?: number;
  subpageTarget?: string | string[];
}

export async function exaSearch(query: string, opts: ExaSearchOptions = {}) {
  const exa = getExa();
  return exa.search(query, {
    type: opts.type ?? "auto",
    numResults: opts.numResults ?? 10,
    ...opts,
  });
}

export async function exaSearchWithContents(
  query: string,
  searchOpts: ExaSearchOptions = {},
  contentOpts: ExaContentsOptions = {}
) {
  const exa = getExa();
  return exa.searchAndContents(query, {
    type: searchOpts.type ?? "auto",
    numResults: searchOpts.numResults ?? 10,
    ...searchOpts,
    ...contentOpts,
  });
}

Step 3: Error Handling Wrapper

// src/exa/safe.ts
interface ExaResult<T> {
  data: T | null;
  error: ExaError | null;
}

interface ExaError {
  status: number;
  message: string;
  tag?: string;
  requestId?: string;
  retryable: boolean;
}

function classifyError(err: any): ExaError {
  const status = err.status || err.response?.status || 500;
  const retryable = status === 429 || status >= 500;
  return {
    status,
    message: err.message || "Unknown error",
    tag: err.error_tag || err.tag,
    requestId: err.requestId || err.request_id,
    retryable,
  };
}

export async function safeExaCall<T>(
  operation: () => Promise<T>
): Promise<ExaResult<T>> {
  try {
    const data = await operation();
    return { data, error: null };
  } catch (err: any) {
    const error = classifyError(err);
    console.error(`[Exa Error] ${error.status}: ${error.message}`, {
      tag: error.tag,
      requestId: error.requestId,
      retryable: error.retryable,
    });
    return { data: null, error };
  }
}

// Usage:
// const { data, error } = await safeExaCall(() =>
//   exa.searchAndContents("query", { numResults: 5, text: true })
// );

Step 4: Retry with Exponential Backoff

// src/exa/retry.ts
export async function withRetry<T>(
  operation: () => Promise<T>,
  config = { maxRetries: 3, baseDelayMs: 1000, maxDelayMs: 30000 }
): Promise<T> {
  for (let attempt = 0; attempt <= config.maxRetries; attempt++) {
    try {
      return await operation();
    } catch (err: any) {
      const status = err.status || err.response?.status || 0;

      // Only retry on rate limits (429) and server errors (5xx)
      if (status !== 429 && (status < 500 || status >= 600)) throw err;
      if (attempt === config.maxRetries) throw err;

      const delay = Math.min(
        config.baseDelayMs * Math.pow(2, attempt) + Math.random() * 500,
        config.maxDelayMs
      );
      console.log(`[Exa] Retry ${attempt + 1}/${config.maxRetries} in ${delay.toFixed(0)}ms`);
      await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, delay));
    }
  }
  throw new Error("Unreachable");
}

// Usage:
// const results = await withRetry(() =>
//   exa.searchAndContents("query", { numResults: 5, text: true })
// );

Step 5: Response Validation with Zod

// src/exa/validate.ts
import { z } from "zod";

const ExaResultSchema = z.object({
  url: z.string().url(),
  title: z.string().nullable(),
  score: z.number(),
  publishedDate: z.string().nullable().optional(),
  text: z.string().optional(),
  highlights: z.array(z.string()).optional(),
  summary: z.string().optional(),
});

const ExaSearchResponseSchema = z.object({
  results: z.array(ExaResultSchema),
  autopromptString: z.string().optional(),
});

export function validateSearchResponse(response: unknown) {
  return ExaSearchResponseSchema.parse(response);
}

Error Handling

| Pattern | Use Case | Benefit | |---------|----------|---------| | Singleton | All API calls | Single client instance, consistent config | | Safe wrapper | Non-critical searches | Prevents uncaught exceptions | | Retry logic | Rate limits and 5xx | Automatic recovery from transient failures | | Zod validation | Response processing | Catches unexpected API response changes | | Typed options | IDE support | Autocomplete and compile-time checks |

Examples

Factory Pattern (Multi-tenant)

const clients = new Map<string, Exa>();

export function getExaForTenant(tenantId: string): Exa {
  if (!clients.has(tenantId)) {
    const apiKey = getTenantApiKey(tenantId); // from your config/vault
    clients.set(tenantId, new Exa(apiKey));
  }
  return clients.get(tenantId)!;
}

Combined: Safe + Retry + Typed

async function resilientSearch(query: string) {
  return safeExaCall(() =>
    withRetry(() =>
      exaSearchWithContents(
        query,
        { type: "neural", numResults: 5 },
        { text: { maxCharacters: 2000 }, highlights: true }
      )
    )
  );
}

Resources

Next Steps

Apply patterns in exa-core-workflow-a for real-world search usage.

Agent Skills: Exa SDK Patterns

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