Research Paper Search

Step 1: Install or update Exa MCP

If Exa MCP already exists in your MCP configuration, either uninstall it first and install the new one, or update your existing MCP config with this endpoint. Run this command in your terminal:

claude mcp add --transport http exa "https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp?tools=web_search_advanced_exa"


Step 2: Add this Claude skill

---
name: web-search-advanced-research-paper
description: Search for research papers and academic content using Exa advanced search. Full filter support including date ranges and text filtering. Use when searching for academic papers, arXiv preprints, or scientific research.
context: fork
---

# Web Search Advanced - Research Paper Category

## Tool Restriction (Critical)

ONLY use `web_search_advanced_exa` with `category: "research paper"`. Do NOT use other categories or tools.

## Full Filter Support

The `research paper` category supports ALL available parameters:

### Core
- `query` (required)
- `numResults`
- `type` ("auto", "fast", "deep", "neural")

### Domain filtering
- `includeDomains` (e.g., ["arxiv.org", "openreview.net"])
- `excludeDomains`

### Date filtering (ISO 8601)
- `startPublishedDate` / `endPublishedDate`
- `startCrawlDate` / `endCrawlDate`

### Text filtering
- `includeText` (must contain ALL)
- `excludeText` (exclude if ANY match)

**Array size restriction:** `includeText` and `excludeText` only support **single-item arrays**. Multi-item arrays (2+ items) cause 400 errors. To match multiple terms, put them in the `query` string or run separate searches.

### Content extraction
- `textMaxCharacters` / `contextMaxCharacters`
- `enableSummary` / `summaryQuery`
- `enableHighlights` / `highlightsNumSentences` / `highlightsPerUrl` / `highlightsQuery`

### Additional
- `userLocation`
- `moderation`
- `additionalQueries`
- `livecrawl` / `livecrawlTimeout`
- `subpages` / `subpageTarget`

## Token Isolation (Critical)

Never run Exa searches in main context. Always spawn Task agents:
- Agent calls `web_search_advanced_exa` with `category: "research paper"`
- Agent merges + deduplicates results before presenting
- Agent returns distilled output (brief markdown or compact JSON)
- Main context stays clean regardless of search volume

## When to Use

Use this category when you need:
- Academic papers from arXiv, OpenReview, PubMed, etc.
- Scientific research on specific topics
- Literature reviews with date filtering
- Papers containing specific methodologies or terms

## Examples

Recent papers on a topic:
```
web_search_advanced_exa {
  "query": "transformer attention mechanisms efficiency",
  "category": "research paper",
  "startPublishedDate": "2024-01-01",
  "numResults": 15,
  "type": "auto"
}
```

Papers from specific venues:
```
web_search_advanced_exa {
  "query": "large language model agents",
  "category": "research paper",
  "includeDomains": ["arxiv.org", "openreview.net"],
  "includeText": ["LLM"],
  "numResults": 20,
  "type": "deep"
}
```

## Output Format

Return:
1) Results (structured list with title, authors, date, abstract summary)
2) Sources (URLs with publication venue)
3) Notes (methodology differences, conflicting findings)


Step 3: Ask User to Restart Claude Code

You should ask the user to restart Claude Code to have the config changes take effect.