Exa Reference Architecture

Overview

Production architecture for Exa neural search integration. Covers search service design, content extraction pipeline, RAG integration, domain-scoped search profiles, and caching strategy.

Architecture Diagram

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                  Application Layer                        │
│   RAG Pipeline  |  Research Agent  |  Content Discovery   │
└──────────┬──────────────┬───────────────┬────────────────┘
           │              │               │
           ▼              ▼               ▼
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                Exa Search Service Layer                    │
│  ┌────────────┐  ┌────────────┐  ┌──────────────────┐    │
│  │ search()   │  │ findSimilar│  │ getContents()    │    │
│  │ neural/    │  │ (URL seed) │  │ (known URLs)     │    │
│  │ keyword/   │  └────────────┘  └──────────────────┘    │
│  │ auto/fast  │                                           │
│  └────────────┘                  ┌──────────────────┐    │
│                                  │ answer() /       │    │
│  Content Options:                │ streamAnswer()   │    │
│  text | highlights | summary     └──────────────────┘    │
│                                                           │
│  ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐  │
│  │              Result Cache (LRU + Redis)             │  │
│  └────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘  │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
         │
         ▼
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  api.exa.ai — Exa Neural Search API                      │
│  Auth: x-api-key header | Rate: 10 QPS default           │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Instructions

Step 1: Search Service Layer

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

const exa = new Exa(process.env.EXA_API_KEY);

interface SearchRequest {
  query: string;
  type?: "auto" | "neural" | "keyword" | "fast" | "instant";
  numResults?: number;
  startDate?: string;
  endDate?: string;
  includeDomains?: string[];
  excludeDomains?: string[];
  category?: "company" | "research paper" | "news" | "tweet" | "people";
}

interface ContentOptions {
  text?: boolean | { maxCharacters?: number };
  highlights?: boolean | { maxCharacters?: number; query?: string };
  summary?: boolean | { query?: string };
}

export async function searchWithContents(
  req: SearchRequest,
  content: ContentOptions = { text: { maxCharacters: 2000 } }
) {
  return exa.searchAndContents(req.query, {
    type: req.type || "auto",
    numResults: req.numResults || 10,
    startPublishedDate: req.startDate,
    endPublishedDate: req.endDate,
    includeDomains: req.includeDomains,
    excludeDomains: req.excludeDomains,
    category: req.category,
    ...content,
  });
}

export async function findRelated(url: string, numResults = 5) {
  return exa.findSimilarAndContents(url, {
    numResults,
    text: { maxCharacters: 1000 },
    excludeSourceDomain: true,
  });
}

Step 2: Research Pipeline

// src/exa/research.ts
export async function researchTopic(topic: string) {
  // Phase 1: Broad neural search
  const sources = await exa.searchAndContents(topic, {
    type: "neural",
    numResults: 15,
    text: { maxCharacters: 2000 },
    highlights: { maxCharacters: 500, query: topic },
    startPublishedDate: "2024-01-01T00:00:00.000Z",
  });

  // Phase 2: Find similar to best result
  const topUrl = sources.results[0]?.url;
  const similar = topUrl
    ? await exa.findSimilarAndContents(topUrl, {
        numResults: 5,
        text: { maxCharacters: 1500 },
        excludeSourceDomain: true,
      })
    : { results: [] };

  // Phase 3: Get AI answer with citations
  const answer = await exa.answer(
    `Based on recent research, summarize: ${topic}`,
    { text: true }
  );

  return {
    primary: sources.results,
    related: similar.results,
    aiSummary: answer.answer,
    sources: answer.results.map(r => ({ title: r.title, url: r.url })),
  };
}

Step 3: RAG Integration Pattern

// src/exa/rag.ts
export async function ragSearch(userQuery: string, contextWindow = 5) {
  const results = await exa.searchAndContents(userQuery, {
    type: "neural",
    numResults: contextWindow,
    text: { maxCharacters: 2000 },
    highlights: { maxCharacters: 500, query: userQuery },
  });

  // Format for LLM context injection
  const context = results.results
    .map((r, i) =>
      `[Source ${i + 1}] ${r.title}\n` +
      `URL: ${r.url}\n` +
      `Content: ${r.text}\n` +
      `Key points: ${r.highlights?.join(" | ")}`
    )
    .join("\n\n---\n\n");

  return {
    context,
    sources: results.results.map(r => ({
      title: r.title,
      url: r.url,
      score: r.score,
    })),
  };
}

Step 4: Domain-Specific Search Profiles

const SEARCH_PROFILES = {
  technical: {
    includeDomains: [
      "github.com", "stackoverflow.com", "arxiv.org",
      "developer.mozilla.org", "docs.python.org",
    ],
  },
  news: {
    category: "news" as const,
    includeDomains: ["techcrunch.com", "theverge.com", "arstechnica.com"],
  },
  research: {
    category: "research paper" as const,
    includeDomains: ["arxiv.org", "nature.com", "science.org"],
  },
  companies: {
    category: "company" as const,
  },
};

export async function profiledSearch(
  query: string,
  profile: keyof typeof SEARCH_PROFILES
) {
  const config = SEARCH_PROFILES[profile];
  return searchWithContents({ query, ...config, numResults: 10 });
}

Step 5: Competitor Discovery

export async function discoverCompetitors(companyUrl: string) {
  const similar = await exa.findSimilarAndContents(companyUrl, {
    numResults: 10,
    excludeSourceDomain: true,
    text: { maxCharacters: 500 },
    summary: { query: "What does this company do?" },
  });

  return similar.results.map(r => ({
    name: r.title,
    url: r.url,
    description: r.summary || r.text?.substring(0, 200),
    score: r.score,
  }));
}

Error Handling

Issue	Cause	Solution
No results	Query too specific	Broaden query, switch to neural search
Low relevance	Wrong search type	Use auto type for hybrid results
Empty text/highlights	Site blocks scraping	Use livecrawl: "preferred" or try summary
Rate limit	Too many concurrent requests	Add request queue with 8-10 concurrency

Resources

• Exa API Documentation
• Exa Search Types
• Exa Contents Retrieval

Next Steps

For architecture variants at different scales, see exa-architecture-variants.