Exa Deterministic Local Development Loop

Overview

Build and test an Exa adapter locally using schema fixtures, recorded content-free envelopes, and an explicit opt-in live lane. 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

Search results, crawl output, and rankings are time-varying. Local tests should own sanitized response fixtures for request and failure shapes, while live calls remain a separately authorized integration lane with a small budget.

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.