People Research

Tool Restriction (Critical)

ONLY use web_search_advanced_exa. Do NOT use web_search_exa or any other Exa tools.

Token Isolation (Critical)

Never run Exa searches in main context. Always spawn Task agents:

• Agent runs Exa search internally
• Agent processes results using LLM intelligence
• Agent returns only distilled output (compact JSON or brief markdown)
• Main context stays clean regardless of search volume

Dynamic Tuning

No hardcoded numResults. Tune to user intent:

• User says "a few" → 10-20
• User says "comprehensive" → 50-100
• User specifies number → match it
• Ambiguous? Ask: "How many profiles would you like?"

Query Variation

Exa returns different results for different phrasings. For coverage:

• Generate 2-3 query variations
• Run in parallel
• Merge and deduplicate

Categories

Use appropriate Exa category depending on what you need:

• people → LinkedIn profiles, public bios (primary for discovery)
• personal site → personal blogs, portfolio sites, about pages
• news → press mentions, interviews, speaker bios
• No category (type: "auto") → general web results, broader context

Start with category: "people" for profile discovery, then use other categories or no category with livecrawl: "fallback" for deeper research on specific individuals.

Category-Specific Filter Restrictions

When using category: "people", these parameters cause errors:

• startPublishedDate / endPublishedDate
• startCrawlDate / endCrawlDate
• includeText / excludeText
• excludeDomains
• includeDomains — LinkedIn domains only (e.g., "linkedin.com")

When searching without a category, all parameters are available (but includeText/excludeText still only support single-item arrays).

LinkedIn

Public LinkedIn via Exa: category: "people", no other filters. Auth-required LinkedIn → use Claude in Chrome browser fallback.

Browser Fallback

Auto-fallback to Claude in Chrome when:

• Exa returns insufficient results
• Content is auth-gated
• Dynamic pages need JavaScript

Examples

Discovery: find people by role

web_search_advanced_exa {
  "query": "VP Engineering AI infrastructure",
  "category": "people",
  "numResults": 20,
  "type": "auto"
}

With query variations

web_search_advanced_exa {
  "query": "machine learning engineer San Francisco",
  "category": "people",
  "additionalQueries": ["ML engineer SF", "AI engineer Bay Area"],
  "numResults": 25,
  "type": "deep"
}

Deep dive: research a specific person

web_search_advanced_exa {
  "query": "Dario Amodei Anthropic CEO background",
  "type": "auto",
  "livecrawl": "fallback",
  "numResults": 15
}

News mentions

web_search_advanced_exa {
  "query": "Dario Amodei interview",
  "category": "news",
  "numResults": 10,
  "startPublishedDate": "2024-01-01"
}

Output Format

Return:

1. Results (name, title, company, location if available)
2. Sources (Profile URLs)
3. Notes (profile completeness, verification status)