Exa Product Architecture Selection

Overview

Choose among direct Search, staged Contents, Answer, Agent, Monitors, Websets, and Batch using explicit latency, verification, volume, and lifecycle criteria. Treat credentials, queries, retrieved content, generated output, spend, and destructive state as separately governed boundaries.

Prerequisites

• The target repository, environment, Exa team, product surface, and accountable owner.
• The workload's data classification, latency and freshness promise, cost ceiling, and retention policy.
• Current first-party documentation plus credentials only for a narrowly approved live check.

Current Contract

The Exa products are complementary rather than drop-in tiers. Search and Contents suit bounded synchronous retrieval; Answer synthesizes a cited response; Agent performs asynchronous multi-step research; Monitors recur and notify; Websets verify and enrich sets; enabled Batch handles offline Search or Agent volume.

Authentication

For normal REST work, inject EXA_API_KEY from an approved server-side secret manager and send it only as Authorization: Bearer to the configured first-party Exa API host. Team Management service keys, hosted MCP OAuth or enterprise managed authorization, and payment-protocol calls are separate trust models. Never print, commit, place in a URL, or expose a credential to an untrusted client.