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Exa

NPM · @PIPEWORX/MCP-EXA · 2 COMPONENTS

Exa MCP — neural/semantic web search + content retrieval (exa.ai)

+3 this week 83 Trust /100

Last scanned (3 hours ago)

Scores higher than 76% of npm servers

Category Search and Retrieval

Trust breakdown (7 categories)

How this component scores in each security and reliability category. Every signal is checked automatically from public evidence about the published package, including repeated runs of it in an isolated sandbox, and we only credit what we can confirm. How we score → Why this is hard to score →

Supply Chain Security100
  • No malware found by supply-chain analysis.Pass
  • No known CVEs affecting this package version or its production dependencies.Pass
  • No install/post-install scripts declared.Pass
  • No production dependencies, so there is no dependency health to assess. View diagnostics → Pass
Provenance & Transparency97
  • Source repository is publicly reachable at the declared URL. View diagnostics → Pass
  • Cryptographically verified build provenance (signed, bound to pipeworx-io/mcp-exa). View diagnostics → Pass
  • Clear OSI-approved license (MIT).Pass
  • Actively maintained (last published 3 days ago).Pass
  • Disclosure check failed: no security disclosure policy was found in the source repository. See how to fix → Fail
Schema Quality & AI Usability69
  • AI-judged instruction clarity (good).Pass
  • Context-footprint check failed: tool/resource definitions use about 538 tokens (~179/item across 3 items; 3 tools + 0 resources), over budget; trim descriptions and params. See how to fix → Fail
  • Usage-examples check failed: none of the tools include examples. See how to fix → Fail
Stability & Change Management23
  • Stability observed for 7 of 30 days with no destabilising changes; credit accrues until the full window elapses.Partial
Tool Coverage100
  • 100% of tools have a non-trivial description (not blank, and not just the tool's name).Pass
  • 100% of tool parameters carry a description.Pass
Tool Safety100
  • No prompt-injection markers were found in the server instructions, tool names or descriptions we captured.Pass
  • We read all 3 captured tool definition(s), and no name or description among them implies an irreversible operation.Pass
  • An AI judge read all 4 captured unit(s) of tool text and found none that tries to manipulate the model reading it.Pass
Capabilities100
  • Implements a supported MCP spec version (2025-11-25); the latest is 2026-07-28.Pass
Changelog

Every change we have recorded for this component, newest first. Security-relevant changes are always shown. ▲ marks a change for the better, ▼ a change for the worse; unmarked changes are neutral.

  • 5 Nov 26 0
    • Security disclosure: unverified → fail ▼ functional
  • 4 Nov 26 +1

    No change was recorded against any check on this day. Stability & Change Management went from 17 to 20. That category is still filling its 30-day observation window: 5 days of observed history at the previous scan, 6 at this one. The score rises as the window fills, whether or not the server changes.

  • 3 Nov 26 0
    • Security disclosure: fail → unverified ▼ functional
  • 2 Nov 26 +1

    No change was recorded against any check on this day. Stability & Change Management went from 10 to 13. That category is still filling its 30-day observation window: 3 days of observed history at the previous scan, 4 at this one. The score rises as the window fills, whether or not the server changes.

  • 1 Nov 26 +1
    • Tool safety: pass → unverified ▼ security
    • Stability: Stability not yet verified: we do not have a sandbox capture of the MCP schema this version of the package serves yet. security
    • Security disclosure: unverified → fail ▼ functional
    • Capabilities: pass → unverified ▼ functional
    • Tool coverage: 100 → unverified ▼ functional
    • Stability: unverified → 0.10 ▲ functional
    • First check of Schema quality: unverified functional
    • Package version: 0.2.0 → 0.2.1 functional
  • 29 Oct 26 80

    First indexed and scored.

Diagnostics

Diagnostic detail from the automated scan of this channel: what the scanner observed at each step, so you can see exactly where a check passed or failed. It is informational only and never changes the trust score.

Captured 5 Nov 2026 · Analysed npm/@pipeworx/mcp-exa@0.2.1

Provenance Verified

A signed build attestation was found and verified, binding this exact artifact to the source repository it claims to come from.

Result Verified
Ecosystem npm
Reason Verified
Discovered via Registry attestation endpoint
Source repo pipeworx-io/mcp-exa
Certificate issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com
Certificate SAN https://github.com/pipeworx-io/mcp-exa/.github/workflows/publish.yml@refs/heads/main
Rekor log index 3635933207
Predicate type SLSA build provenance https://slsa.dev/provenance/v1
Subject digest sha512:f4f66d0cdd3fb17b0ddc4af0bb3e8d1edb9c66567663778d21a356796ca323923eb3193776cf2299d0c551f6eabbced875a5c86d7b3f17b50476d4d5d

Background: How many MCP packages publish verified provenance →

Dependencies 0 packages
Packages resolved 0
Tree resolution Complete

Background: SBOMs and build attestations, explained →

MCP tools · 3 exposed · ~486 tokens

The tools this component advertises to a client, with an estimated token cost for each. Expand a tool to see its parameters and schema. The per-tool counts are indicative and are not scored directly; the schema's total context footprint is one signal in Schema Quality & AI Usability. A tool's description is untrusted text the model reads on every call, which is what makes this list a security surface and not just an inventory: how tool poisoning works →

Tool Tokens
find_similar ~125

Find pages similar to a given URL using neural/semantic matching. Returns title, URL, relevance score, and published date. Example: find_similar({ url: "https://example.com/great-article", num_results: 10 })

NameTypeReqDescription
_apiKeystring–Optional — your own Exa API key for higher limits; omit to use the shared Pipeworx key.
num_resultsnumber–Number of results to return (default 10, max 25)
urlstringyesThe URL to find semantically similar pages for.

No output schema declared.

No examples provided.

get_contents ~106

Retrieve clean, parsed page contents (text) for one or more Exa result IDs or URLs. Use after search to read the full content of pages. Example: get_contents({ ids: ["https://example.com/article"] })

NameTypeReqDescription
_apiKeystring–Optional — your own Exa API key for higher limits; omit to use the shared Pipeworx key.
idsstring|arrayyesAn Exa result ID or URL, or an array of them.

No output schema declared.

No examples provided.

search ~255

Neural/semantic web search — find pages by meaning, not just keywords. Returns title, URL, published date, author, and relevance score. Optionally retrieve clean page text inline. Example: search({ query: "startups building AI agents for customer support", num_results: 10, type: "neural" })

NameTypeReqDescription
_apiKeystring–Optional — your own Exa API key for higher limits; omit to use the shared Pipeworx key.
categorystring–Optional focus category, e.g. 'company', 'research paper', 'news', 'pdf', 'github', 'tweet'.
include_textboolean–If true, include the clean parsed page text (up to 2000 chars) for each result. Default false.
num_resultsnumber–Number of results to return (default 10, max 25)
querystringyesThe search query — describe what you want by meaning, e.g. "recent research on protein folding with diffusion models"
typestring–Search mode: 'neural' (semantic/meaning-based), 'keyword' (traditional), or 'auto' (Exa picks). Default 'auto'.

No output schema declared.

No examples provided.

Install

How do I install the Exa MCP server?

Exa runs locally as an npm package, launched with npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-exa. Ready-made configuration for Claude, Cursor, VS Code, Codex and 5 more is on this page, copied from each client's own documentation.

npm · @pipeworx/mcp-exa

# add to Claude Code
claude mcp add pipeworx-io-exa -- npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-exa
Common questions

What is the Exa MCP server?

Exa is an MCP server listed in the public MCP registry as io.github.pipeworx-io/exa. Exa MCP, neural/semantic web search + content retrieval (exa.ai). This page covers its npm package (@pipeworx/mcp-exa).

Is the Exa MCP server safe to use?

Exa scores 83 out of 100 on VerifyMCP. We found no known CVEs affecting it as of 5 November 2026. It declares no install or post-install scripts. Its build provenance is signed and verified. That is a record of what we were able to check automatically, not an endorsement. The category breakdown on this page shows every signal behind the number, including the ones we could not confirm.

What tools does the Exa MCP server expose?

Exa exposes 3 tools: search, get_contents, find_similar. Their descriptions and schemas cost roughly 486 tokens of context every time the server is loaded.

Is the Exa MCP server still maintained?

Exa is still listed as active in the MCP registry. We last reached this channel on 5 November 2026. Those dates come from our own scans of the registry and the channel itself, not from anything the publisher announced.

What licence is the Exa MCP server under?

Exa declares the MIT licence, which is OSI-approved. That covers the source only, and says nothing about the cost of any service it calls.