Company Research (Exa)

Tool

Use exec to call: mcporter call exa-search.web_search_advanced_exa <params>

All searches run via mcporter CLI. Never call Exa directly — always use mcporter.

Critical Rules

• Never run searches in main context. Always spawn subagents via llm_task or run in sequence with isolated results.
• Query variation: generate 2-3 phrasings, run in parallel, merge + deduplicate.
• Dynamic numResults: "a few" → 10-20, "comprehensive" → 50-100, explicit number → match it.

Categories

Category	Use for
company	Homepages, metadata (headcount, location, funding)
news	Press coverage, announcements
tweet	Social presence
people	LinkedIn profiles
(none)	General web, deep dives

Start with category=company for discovery, then use other categories for deeper research.

Category Restrictions

With category=company: do NOT use includeDomains, excludeDomains, or date filters — causes errors. includeText/excludeText: only single-value strings.

Call Syntax

# Company discovery
mcporter call exa-search.web_search_advanced_exa \
  query="AI infrastructure startups San Francisco" \
  category=company \
  numResults=20 \
  type=auto

# Deep dive on specific company
mcporter call exa-search.web_search_advanced_exa \
  query="Anthropic funding rounds valuation 2024" \
  type=neural \
  livecrawl=fallback \
  numResults=10 \
  includeDomains='["techcrunch.com","crunchbase.com","bloomberg.com"]'

# News coverage
mcporter call exa-search.web_search_advanced_exa \
  query="Anthropic AI safety 2024" \
  category=news \
  numResults=15 \
  startPublishedDate=2024-01-01

# Tweets/social
mcporter call exa-search.web_search_advanced_exa \
  query="Anthropic Claude new features" \
  category=tweet \
  numResults=20

Output Format

Return:

1. Results — structured list, one company per row (name, URL, description, key facts)
2. Sources — URLs with 1-line relevance
3. Notes — any uncertainty or conflicts

Browser Fallback

If Exa returns insufficient results or content is auth-gated → use browser tool as fallback.