Exa Agent Run Lifecycle

Overview

Run asynchronous Exa Agent research with a bounded schema, effort, terminal-state policy, citations, and cleanup decision. 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

Agent runs are asynchronous unless streamed. A created run returns an ID that must be polled, streamed, stopped, cancelled, or deleted through the Agent lifecycle. Fixed effort provides a predictable price; auto and beta max are usage-metered. Structured output and grounding require separate validation.

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.