cli-anything-exa

What the source does

• FilesystemNone observedNo reads or writes in the source
• NetworkNone observedNo outbound calls in the source
• ShellNone observedNo commands run in the source
• DependenciesPinnedNothing floats
• SecretsNone foundNo keys in source

Five audit layers

Gates applied: no behavioural pass.

Audit 0.4.1 · source sha 08db4c1acaf7 · 31 Oct 2026Report an issue or request a re-scan

• Publisherhkuds GitHub organizationOwner of the repository this skill is read from
• Source folderhkuds/cli-anything/skills/cli-anything-exaThe exact folder we audited
• LicenceApache-2.0As the repository states it
• Commit pinned for this verdict08db4c1acaf7A new audit runs when the source changes
• Repository statusNot archivedLast push 39 days ago
• Sandboxed runNot runSkills are read, not executed; layer L4 is skipped

Its description: Agent-native CLI for Exa web search and content retrieval workflows.

---
name: "cli-anything-exa"
description: >-
  Agent-native CLI for Exa web search and content retrieval workflows.
---

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

## Command Reference

### search — Web search
```bash
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
```bash
cli-anything-exa contents <url> [url ...] [--content text|highlights|summary] [--freshness smart|always|never]
```

### server status — Verify API key and connectivity
```bash
cli-anything-exa server status
```

## JSON Output
All commands support `--json` at the root level for machine-readable output:
```bash
cli-anything-exa --json search "latest LLM papers" --num-results 5
```

## Common Agent Patterns

### Fast keyword lookup
```bash
cli-anything-exa --json search "site:arxiv.org transformer architectures" --type fast --content highlights
```

### Deep research on a topic
```bash
cli-anything-exa --json search "EU AI Act compliance requirements 2024" --type deep --content text
```

### Academic paper discovery
```bash
cli-anything-exa --json search "retrieval augmented generation" --category research-paper --num-results 20
```

### Company intelligence
```bash
cli-anything-exa --json search "Anthropic funding history" --category company
```

### News monitoring
```bash
cli-anything-exa --json search "AI regulation news" --category news --from 2024-01-01
```

### Fetch full content for summarisation
```bash
cli-anything-exa --json contents https://example.com/article --content text
```

## Interactive REPL
```bash
cli-anything-exa   # No subcommand → enters REPL
```
Type commands without the `cli-anything-exa` prefix. Type `exit` or `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`

Excerpt, first 3,232 characters of SKILL.md, verbatim from the audited commit. It is text from someone else’s repository, quoted so you can judge it before your agent reads it.

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

git clone https://github.com/hkuds/cli-anything
git -C cli-anything checkout 08db4c1acaf7

Works in

1. 2026-10-31
   ✓SAFE B 89 / 100

   first audit · source 08db4c1acaf7

Questions about cli-anything-exa

• github.com/hkuds/cli-anything/tree/main/skills/cli-anything-exa — the audited source at commit 08db4c1acaf7 and every finding aboveObserved · 31 Oct 2026

Spotted something wrong? Report a correction · Methodology