Exa Query and Content Policy Guardrails

Overview

Enforce query, domain, moderation, freshness, content, and downstream-use policy before and after Exa retrieval. 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 supports include and exclude domains, date filters, categories, user location, and moderation, with documented category incompatibilities. These controls reduce scope but do not replace application authorization, content inspection, attribution, or output policy.

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.