The outcome

Build a reproducible research dataset from selected web pages with controlled freshness and traceability.

Exa is a web search, content retrieval, and research API for AI applications. Finding web sources with semantic and filtered search, retrieving page contents, and supplying inspectable evidence to research or agent workflows. This guide narrows that broad capability into one repeatable outcome, with checkpoints that keep the source material and your judgment in the loop.

Before you begin

Set the boundary before the tool starts.

Choose one real task, identify who will use the result, and decide what evidence or test will make the result acceptable. Gather only the source material needed for that task. If the work contains confidential, personal, regulated, or client-owned information, confirm that the platform and account are approved before sharing it.

Troiana principle

AI should make the work easier to inspect. If the workflow removes the source, the owner, or the review step, redesign the workflow.

Step by step

A workflow you can repeat.

  1. 01

    Search broadly enough to find candidate sources, then deduplicate canonical URLs and apply ownership, authority, date, and license criteria.

  2. 02

    Retrieve contents only for the curated URL set and request the smallest necessary form: highlights, text, or summary.

  3. 03

    Treat page text as untrusted data, strip prompt-like instructions, detect sensitive content, and retain source-to-chunk lineage.

  4. 04

    Compare cached and live results where freshness matters, handling retrieval status, partial failures, timeouts, and changing pages.

  5. 05

    Store approved snapshots with retrieval time and configuration, then require citation-backed review before publishing conclusions.

Working standard

What good use looks like.

  • Curate before fetching full text.
  • Treat web content as untrusted input.
  • Version source snapshots and retrieval settings.

Search results and page contents can be wrong, stale, malicious, copyrighted, or sensitive. Protect keys, constrain domains and cost, moderate exposed queries, treat retrieved text as untrusted, preserve citations, and verify evidence before action or publication.

Official references

Check the current product documentation.

Features, plan limits, availability, and data controls change. These official pages are the starting points used for this collection.