CLI-Anything cli-anything-exa

install

source · Clone the upstream repo

git clone https://github.com/HKUDS/CLI-Anything

Claude Code · Install into ~/.claude/skills/

T=$(mktemp -d) && git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/HKUDS/CLI-Anything "$T" && mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r "$T/exa/agent-harness/cli_anything/exa/skills" ~/.claude/skills/hkuds-cli-anything-cli-anything-exa && rm -rf "$T"

manifest: exa/agent-harness/cli_anything/exa/skills/SKILL.md

Exa CLI Skill

Identity

Name: cli-anything-exa
Version: 1.0.0
Category: search
Entry Point:
```
cli-anything-exa
```

What This CLI Does

Provides an agent-native command-line interface to the Exa API — a neural search engine optimised for AI agent workflows. Supports web search across multiple modes (fast, deep, deep-reasoning) and fetching full-text or highlighted page contents.

Prerequisites

Python >= 3.10
```
pip install cli-anything-exa
```
```
export EXA_API_KEY="your-api-key"
```
(get one at https://dashboard.exa.ai/api-keys)

Installation

pip install git+https://github.com/HKUDS/CLI-Anything.git#subdirectory=exa/agent-harness

Command Reference

search — Web search

cli-anything-exa search "<query>" [OPTIONS]

Options:
  --type       auto|fast|instant|deep|deep-reasoning  (default: auto)
  --num-results / -n   1–100  (default: 10)
  --category   company|people|research-paper|news|personal-site|financial-report
  --content    highlights|text|summary|none  (default: highlights)
  --freshness  smart|always|never  (default: smart)
  --include-domains DOMAIN   (repeatable)
  --exclude-domains DOMAIN   (repeatable)
  --from DATE   ISO 8601 start published date
  --to   DATE   ISO 8601 end published date
  --location CC  Two-letter country code for geo-bias

contents — Fetch page contents

cli-anything-exa contents <url> [url ...] [--content text|highlights|summary] [--freshness smart|always|never]

server status — Verify API key and connectivity

cli-anything-exa server status

JSON Output

All commands support

--json

at the root level for machine-readable output:

cli-anything-exa --json search "latest LLM papers" --num-results 5

Common Agent Patterns

Fast keyword lookup

cli-anything-exa --json search "site:arxiv.org transformer architectures" --type fast --content highlights

Deep research on a topic

cli-anything-exa --json search "EU AI Act compliance requirements 2024" --type deep --content text

Academic paper discovery

cli-anything-exa --json search "retrieval augmented generation" --category research-paper --num-results 20

Company intelligence

cli-anything-exa --json search "Anthropic funding history" --category company

News monitoring

cli-anything-exa --json search "AI regulation news" --category news --from 2024-01-01

Fetch full content for summarisation

cli-anything-exa --json contents https://example.com/article --content text

Interactive REPL

cli-anything-exa   # No subcommand → enters REPL

Type commands without the

cli-anything-exa

prefix. Type

exit

quit

to leave.

Notes

```
highlights
```
content mode is 10× more token-efficient than
```
text
```
— prefer it for agent pipelines
```
--type deep
```
triggers multi-step reasoning; slower but synthesises across many sources
```
--category company
```
and
```
--category people
```
do not support date or domain-exclude filters
Cost per query is included in JSON output under
```
cost_dollars
```