Exa Reliability Patterns

Overview

Production reliability patterns for Exa neural search. Exa-specific failure modes include: empty result sets (query too narrow), content retrieval failures (sites block crawling), variable latency by search type, and 429 rate limits at 10 QPS default.

Instructions

Step 1: Query Fallback Chain

import Exa from "exa-js";

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

// If neural search returns too few results, fall back through search types
async function resilientSearch(
  query: string,
  minResults = 3,
  opts: any = {}
) {
  // Try 1: Neural search (best quality)
  let results = await exa.searchAndContents(query, {
    type: "neural",
    numResults: 10,
    ...opts,
  });
  if (results.results.length >= minResults) return results;

  // Try 2: Auto search (Exa picks best approach)
  results = await exa.searchAndContents(query, {
    type: "auto",
    numResults: 10,
    ...opts,
  });
  if (results.results.length >= minResults) return results;

  // Try 3: Keyword search (different index)
  results = await exa.searchAndContents(query, {
    type: "keyword",
    numResults: 10,
    ...opts,
  });
  if (results.results.length >= minResults) return results;

  // Try 4: Remove filters and broaden
  const broadOpts = { ...opts };
  delete broadOpts.startPublishedDate;
  delete broadOpts.endPublishedDate;
  delete broadOpts.includeDomains;
  delete broadOpts.includeText;

  return exa.searchAndContents(query, {
    type: "auto",
    numResults: 10,
    ...broadOpts,
  });
}

Step 2: Retry with Exponential Backoff

async function searchWithRetry(
  query: string,
  opts: any,
  maxRetries = 3
) {
  for (let attempt = 0; attempt <= maxRetries; attempt++) {
    try {
      return await exa.searchAndContents(query, opts);
    } catch (err: any) {
      const status = err.status || 0;

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

      const delay = 1000 * Math.pow(2, attempt) + Math.random() * 500;
      console.log(`[Exa] ${status} retry ${attempt + 1}/${maxRetries} in ${delay.toFixed(0)}ms`);
      await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, delay));
    }
  }
  throw new Error("Unreachable");
}

Step 3: Circuit Breaker

class ExaCircuitBreaker {
  private failures = 0;
  private lastFailure = 0;
  private state: "closed" | "open" | "half-open" = "closed";
  private readonly threshold = 5;       // failures before opening
  private readonly resetTimeMs = 30000; // 30s before half-open

  async execute<T>(fn: () => Promise<T>, fallback?: () => T): Promise<T> {
    // Check if circuit should reset
    if (this.state === "open") {
      if (Date.now() - this.lastFailure > this.resetTimeMs) {
        this.state = "half-open";
      } else if (fallback) {
        return fallback();
      } else {
        throw new Error("Exa circuit breaker is open");
      }
    }

    try {
      const result = await fn();
      if (this.state === "half-open") {
        this.state = "closed";
        this.failures = 0;
      }
      return result;
    } catch (err: any) {
      this.failures++;
      this.lastFailure = Date.now();

      if (this.failures >= this.threshold) {
        this.state = "open";
        console.warn(`[Exa] Circuit breaker OPEN after ${this.failures} failures`);
      }

      if (fallback && this.state === "open") return fallback();
      throw err;
    }
  }

  getState() {
    return { state: this.state, failures: this.failures };
  }
}

const circuitBreaker = new ExaCircuitBreaker();

// Usage with fallback to cached results
const result = await circuitBreaker.execute(
  () => exa.searchAndContents("query", { numResults: 5, text: true }),
  () => getCachedResults("query") // fallback when circuit is open
);

Step 4: Graceful Degradation

interface SearchResultWithMeta {
  results: any[];
  degraded: boolean;
  source: "live" | "cache" | "fallback";
  searchType: string;
}

async function degradableSearch(
  query: string,
  opts: any = {}
): Promise<SearchResultWithMeta> {
  // Level 1: Full search with contents
  try {
    const results = await searchWithRetry(query, {
      type: "neural",
      numResults: 10,
      text: { maxCharacters: 2000 },
      highlights: { maxCharacters: 500 },
      ...opts,
    }, 2);
    return { results: results.results, degraded: false, source: "live", searchType: "neural" };
  } catch {}

  // Level 2: Fast search without content (less expensive)
  try {
    const results = await exa.search(query, {
      type: "fast",
      numResults: 5,
    });
    return { results: results.results, degraded: true, source: "live", searchType: "fast" };
  } catch {}

  // Level 3: Return cached results
  const cached = getCachedResults(query);
  if (cached) {
    return { results: cached, degraded: true, source: "cache", searchType: "cached" };
  }

  // Level 4: Return empty with degradation flag
  return { results: [], degraded: true, source: "fallback", searchType: "none" };
}

Step 5: Result Quality Monitoring

class SearchQualityMonitor {
  private stats = { total: 0, empty: 0, lowScore: 0 };

  record(results: any[]) {
    this.stats.total++;
    if (results.length === 0) this.stats.empty++;
    if (results[0]?.score < 0.5) this.stats.lowScore++;
  }

  isHealthy(): boolean {
    if (this.stats.total < 10) return true; // not enough data
    const emptyRate = this.stats.empty / this.stats.total;
    const lowScoreRate = this.stats.lowScore / this.stats.total;
    return emptyRate < 0.2 && lowScoreRate < 0.3;
  }

  getReport() {
    return {
      ...this.stats,
      emptyRate: `${((this.stats.empty / this.stats.total) * 100).toFixed(1)}%`,
      lowScoreRate: `${((this.stats.lowScore / this.stats.total) * 100).toFixed(1)}%`,
      healthy: this.isHealthy(),
    };
  }
}

Error Handling

Issue	Cause	Solution
Empty results	Query too specific	Use fallback chain with broader query
Slow responses	Neural on complex query	Degrade to fast type
429 rate limit	Burst traffic	Circuit breaker + backoff
Content retrieval fails	Site blocks crawling	Fall back to highlights or summary
Quality degradation	Query drift	Monitor empty/low-score rates

Resources

• Exa API Reference
• Exa Error Codes
• Circuit Breaker Pattern

Next Steps

For policy guardrails, see exa-policy-guardrails. For architecture variants, see exa-architecture-variants.