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Context Endpoint Reference

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Canonical Docs Links

• Base docs URL: https://exa.ai/docs
• Context reference: /reference/context

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Contents

• Overview
• Request shape
• Parameters
• Response shape
• When it beats general search
• Integration examples
• Critical pitfalls

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Overview

• framework or library usage
• API syntax examples
• implementation patterns
• setup or configuration guidance
• coding best practices sourced from real code and docs

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Request Shape

POST https://api.exa.ai/context
{
  "query": "how to use React hooks for state management",
  "tokensNum": 5000
}

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Parameters

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Response Shape

• requestId
• query
• response as markdown/code context
• resultsCount
• costDollars
• searchTime
• outputTokens

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When It Beats General Search

• code examples are more important than general web pages
• the consumer is a coding agent or developer tool
• token-efficient technical context is the main goal

• the query is general web research, not code-specific
• you need specialized categories such as people or company
• you need result-level content extraction or synthesized outputSchema behavior

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Integration Examples

import requests

response = requests.post(
    "https://api.exa.ai/context",
    headers={
        "Content-Type": "application/json",
        "x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY"
    },
    json={
        "query": "Express.js middleware for authentication",
        "tokensNum": "dynamic"
    }
)

print(response.json()["response"])

const response = await fetch("https://api.exa.ai/context", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
    "x-api-key": process.env.EXA_API_KEY!
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    query: "React hooks for state management examples",
    tokensNum: "dynamic"
  })
});

const result = await response.json();
console.log(result.response);

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Critical Pitfalls

1. tokensNum belongs to the context endpoint, not to the search or contents endpoints.
2. Do not assume the response looks like ranked search results; the main payload is the formatted response field.
3. Use the search endpoint instead when the task is general web retrieval rather than code retrieval.