Agent skill · product strategy · jeremylongshore
exa-reference-architecture
Design an Exa architecture that separates query policy, retrieval, content handling, asynchronous state, citations, and evidence. Use when operating or reviewing this Exa boundary. Trigger with "Exa reference architecture", "review Exa reference architecture", or "fix Exa reference architecture".
Why this skill is useful
Provides specific architectural patterns and integration steps for Exa neural search applications that the AI wouldn't reliably generate on its own.
What it needs
Requires exa account access. About 3k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-08-07. 2,604 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
Exa Retrieval Architecture Boundary Overview Design an Exa architecture that separates query policy, retrieval, content handling, asynchronous state, citations, and evidence. Treat credentials, queries, retrieved content, generated output, spend, and destructive state as separately governed boundaries. Prerequisites The target repository, environment, Exa team, product surface, and accountable owner. The workload's data classification, latency and freshness promise, cost ceiling, and retention policy. Current first-party documentation plus credentials only for a narrowly approved live check. Current Contract Use Search for ranked discovery, Contents for known URLs, Answer for a direct cited response, Agent for multi-step research, Monitors for recurring discovery, Websets for verified and enriched sets, and Batch for enabled enterprise offline volume. Each product has distinct lifecycle and trust boundaries. Authentication For normal REST work, inject EXAAPIKEY from an approved server-side secret manager and send it only as Authorization: Bearer to the configured first-party Exa API host. Team Management service keys, hosted MCP OAuth or enterprise managed authorization, and payment-protocol calls are separate trust models. Never print, commit, place in a URL, or expose a credential to an untrusted client. Instructions 1. Classify the user outcome, latency class, data sensitivity, freshness, and volume. 2. Select the narrowest Exa product that satisfies the outcome. 3. Place policy and credential enforcement before the vendor adapter. 4. Separate retrieved content from content-free operational metadata and citations. 5. Persist only necessary asynchronous IDs and define terminal-state reconciliation. 6. Diagram failure, retention, deletion, webhook, cost, and rollback boundaries. Tool Discipline Use Read, Glob, and Grep to inspect repository code, configuration, fixtures, and evidence. Use Write and Edit only for approved implementation or documentation changes. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills jeremylongshore/exa-reference-architecture