@victor-software-house/exa-cli

Agent-friendly CLI for the Exa API: search, contents, answer, similar, context, and agent runs, backed by a local SQLite request cache.

Install

npm ships a launcher that pulls a prebuilt binary for your platform. Node 20+ is enough — Bun is embedded in the binary:

bun add -g @victor-software-house/exa-cli
npm install -g @victor-software-house/exa-cli
bunx @victor-software-house/exa-cli --help

Agents and operator checkouts install the rolling GitHub Release binary through mise. Pin 0.0.0 — that tag is a rolling channel, not a frozen npm version:

[tools]
"github:victor-software-house/exa-cli" = "0.0.0"

mise install
exa --help

Source checkout:

mise install
bun src/cli.ts --help

The binary name is exa. That can collide with the old exa / eza ls replacement.

On Alpine and other musl distributions, the binary needs libstdc++ (apk add libstdc++), which every Bun-compiled musl binary links dynamically.

Auth

For interactive use, store the key in the operating system credential store:

exa auth login
exa auth status
exa auth logout

auth login reads from a hidden prompt on a terminal or from stdin when piped. It uses macOS Keychain, Linux Secret Service, and Windows Credential Manager. If secure storage is unavailable, it fails closed. --insecure-storage explicitly permits a plaintext fallback at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/exa-cli/credentials.json or ~/.config/exa-cli/credentials.json, created with mode 0600.

For automation, set EXA_API_KEY. Resolution order is --api-key, EXA_API_KEY, then the stored credential. Passing a key in --api-key can expose it through the process list, so prefer the environment or exa auth login.

No external command or library is required: the credential store is reached through a linked addon. Linux still needs a D-Bus session with a Secret Service provider such as gnome-keyring, so headless and CI environments should use EXA_API_KEY.

Operator checkouts with the global fnox profile exa get EXA_API_KEY from mise (mise.dev.toml / mise -E test).

Commands

exa search "Exa search type auto vs neural official docs" --include-domain exa.ai
exa contents https://exa.ai/docs/reference/search.md
exa answer "when did Exa ship the context endpoint"
exa similar https://exa.ai/docs/reference/search.md
exa context "how to use React hooks for state management" --tokens-num 500
exa agent create "narrow research question"
exa agent create "narrow research question" --wait --timeout 600
exa agent get agent_run_…
exa agent wait agent_run_… --timeout 600
exa agent cancel agent_run_…
exa auth status
exa doctor
exa cache path|clear|prune

Every command also accepts --request '<json>' with the raw provider body (validated against the generated schema for that endpoint) instead of the flag surface.

Output

Format is flag-driven. There is no TTY sniffing and no file-extension inference: what you pass is what you get.

Flags	Result
none	Human-readable text on stdout, even when piped
--json	Compact provider JSON
--pretty	Indented JSON (implies JSON, beats --json)
-o FILE	Always writes JSON to the file; --pretty indents it
--envelope	Wraps JSON output with { data, cache: { hit, ageMs } }

Writing to a file never transforms content — a .md output path still gets JSON. Progress, cache hits, and errors go to stderr, so exa search … --json | jq .results is always safe.

Color applies to the text render only: on by default on a TTY, controlled by --color / --no-color and NO_COLOR / FORCE_COLOR.

Cache and cost

Every uncached call spends Exa credits. Identical requests within the TTL are served free from a local SQLite cache at $XDG_CACHE_HOME/exa-cli/ or ~/.cache/exa-cli/, announced as cache hit age=… on stderr.

• Cache keys include a digest of the API key — two accounts never share cached responses.
• Default TTL is 24 hours; --ttl SECONDS overrides per call.
• --refresh skips the read and overwrites the entry. Use only when staleness provably matters.
• --no-cache skips reads and writes.
• exa cache prune deletes expired entries; exa cache clear deletes all; exa cache path prints the database location.
• agent create, agent get, agent wait, and agent cancel never cache: create and cancel mutate, get and wait poll.

Do not repeat an identical call in a loop — the first response is already stored.

Agent skill

npx skills add victor-software-house/exa-cli

Development

mise install
mise run verify                 # lint + typecheck + unit tests + build
mise -E test run test:live      # paid Exa calls; skips without EXA_API_KEY

Releases are CI-owned: merge a changeset, the Release workflow opens a Version Packages PR, and merging it publishes to npm (six platform packages plus the launcher umbrella), tags, and uploads versioned binaries. A new npm package name needs a one-time mise run release:bootstrap first (browser login; same staged platforms CI publishes).