How to integrate Exa MCP with Hermes

Connect Hermes to Exa MCP. Summarize recent news articles on ai safety, find similar research papers to this url, and more using natural language, with authentication handled for you.

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Exa is a data extraction and search platform for gathering and analyzing information from websites, APIs, or databases. It helps teams quickly surface insights and automate data-driven workflows.

64 Tools

Introduction

Hermes is a 24/7 autonomous agent that lives on your computer or server — it remembers what it learns and evolves as your usage grows.

This guide explains the easiest and most robust way to connect your Exa account to Hermes. You can do this through either Composio Connect CLI or Composio Connect MCP. For personal use we recommend the CLI, but you won't go wrong with MCP either.

Also integrate Exa with

What is Composio Connect?

Composio Connect is a consumer offering that lets anyone plug 1,500+ applications directly into their agent harness — including Hermes. It can:

  • Search and load tools from relevant toolkits on-demand, reducing context usage.
  • Chain multiple tools to accomplish complex workflows via a remote workbench, without excessive back-and-forth with the LLM.
  • Manage app authentication end-to-end with zero manual overhead.

Integrating Exa with Hermes

Using Composio Connect CLI

1. Install the Composio CLI

Run the install script directly, or paste https://composio.dev/hermes into your Hermes chat box to have it installed for you.

bash
curl -fsSL https://composio.dev/install | bash
Hermes authenticating with Composio

2. Authenticate

Once the CLI is installed, ask Hermes to authenticate with Composio.

3. Connect to Exa

Ask your agent to connect to Exa, or simply request any Exa-related task. Hermes will prompt you to authenticate and authorize access.

4. Done. You're all set with a new Exa connection.


Using Composio Connect MCP

1. Get your MCP URL and API Key

Go to dashboard.composio.dev and copy your Connect MCP URL and API key.

Copy MCP URL and API key from Composio dashboard

2. Open the Hermes config file

bash
nano ~/.hermes/config.yaml

3. Add the Composio Connect MCP server

bash
mcp_servers:
  composio:
    url: "https://connect.composio.dev/mcp"
    headers:
      x-consumer-api-key: "YOUR_COMPOSIO_API_KEY"
    connect_timeout: 60
    timeout: 180

Save with Ctrl + O, Enter, then exit with Ctrl + X.

4. Restart your Hermes agent

Once restarted, ask your agent to connect to Exa or request any Exa-related task. It will prompt you to authenticate and authorize access.

5. Done!

What is the Exa MCP server, and what's possible with it?

The Exa MCP server is an implementation of the Model Context Protocol that connects your AI agent and assistants like Claude, Cursor, etc directly to your Exa account. It provides structured and secure access to Exa’s web search, content extraction, and research tools, so your agent can search the web, generate cited answers, retrieve website content, conduct in-depth research, and organize findings on your behalf.

  • Web search: Have your agent search the web with Exa to find relevant sources for a topic, question, company, or market.
  • Citation-backed answers: Ask the agent to answer specific questions or summarize broad topics using supporting web sources and citations.
  • Website content extraction: Direct your agent to retrieve text, highlights, summaries, and linked subpages from websites or saved documents.
  • Multi-step research: Let the agent start research tasks, check their progress, and return synthesized findings with citations when the work is complete.
  • Research collection management: Instruct your agent to create or delete web collections, import data into them, review imports, add enrichment, and set up monitors.

Way Forward

With Exa connected, Hermes can now act on your behalf whenever it detects a relevant task or you ask it to.

From here, you can extend Hermes further:

  • Connect more apps: Calendar, Slack, Notion, Linear, and hundreds of others are available through the same Composio Connect setup. Each new integration compounds what Hermes can do for you.
  • Build workflows across tools: Once multiple apps are connected, Hermes can chain actions together — turn an email into a calendar invite, a Slack message into a Linear ticket, or a meeting note into a follow-up draft.
  • Let it learn your patterns: The more you use Hermes, the better it gets at anticipating how you'd handle recurring tasks. Give it feedback on drafts and decisions, and it will adapt.

If you run into trouble or want to share what you've built, join the community or check out the Docs for deeper configuration options.

TOOLS

Supported Tools

Every Exa action and event your agent gets out of the box.

Generate an answer

Generates a direct, citation-backed answer to a clear natural language question or topic using Exa's search, adept at both specific answers and detailed summaries for open-ended queries.

Batch Search Monitors

Delete, pause, or unpause one batch of matching Search API monitors, not Websets monitors.

Cancel Agent Run

Cancel a queued or running Agent run immediately without returning results.

Cancel Webset

Cancel all operations on a Webset, stopping searches and enrichments.

Cancel Webset Enrichment

Cancel a running Webset enrichment and return its updated state.

Cancel Webset Search

Cancel a running search in a Webset and return its updated state.

Create Agent Run

Start an asynchronous Exa Agent run for multi-step web research or enrichment.

Create API Key

Create an API key for the authenticated Exa team.

Create Import

Tool to create a new import to upload data into a Webset.

Create a Monitor

Tool to create a new Monitor.

Create Search Monitor

Create a Search API monitor that delivers new, deduplicated search results to a webhook.

Create Webhook

Create a webhook delivering selected events to your URL.

Create Webset

Tool to create a new Webset with search, import, and enrichment setup.

Create Webset Enrichment

Create an enrichment task for items in an existing Webset.

Create Webset Search

Create a search for an existing Webset and return its initial state.

Delete Agent Run

Delete a stored Exa Agent run by ID and return its deletion receipt.

Delete API Key

Delete an API key belonging to the authenticated team using a Team Management service key.

Delete import

Tool to delete an existing import.

Delete Search Monitor

Permanently delete a Search API monitor and return the deleted monitor.

Delete Webhook

Delete a webhook, making its status inactive and stopping future deliveries to its URL.

Delete webset

Tool to delete a Webset.

Delete Webset Enrichment

Delete a Webset enrichment and return the deleted enrichment.

Delete Webset Item

Delete an item from a Webset and return the deleted item.

Delete Websets Monitor

Delete a Websets monitor and return the deleted monitor.

Get Agent Run

Retrieve an Agent run to inspect its status, output, citations, usage, or cost.

Get API Key

Tool to retrieve details of a specific API key by its ID.

Get API Key Usage

Get an Exa API key's total cost and cost breakdown for a time period.

Get contents from URLs or document IDs

Retrieve text / highlights / summary / subpages from URLs.

Get Event

Tool to get details of a specific event by its ID.

Get Import

Retrieve an import by ID to inspect its status, entity count, and failure details.

Get Search Monitor

Retrieve a Search API monitor's configuration, status, and next scheduled run by ID.

Get Search Monitor Run

Retrieve a Search API monitor run's status and full output when completed.

Get Webhook

Retrieve a webhook's status, events, destination URL, and metadata by ID.

Get Webset

Retrieve a Webset by ID or external ID, including its status and operations.

Get Webset Enrichment

Retrieve an enrichment configured on a Webset, including its status, description, format, and options.

Get Webset Item

Retrieve a Webset item by ID, including its properties, evaluations, and enrichments.

Get Webset Search

Retrieve a Webset search by ID to inspect its status, progress, and recall metrics.

Get Websets Monitor

Retrieve a Websets monitor's status, schedule, search behavior, and last run.

Get Websets Monitor Run

Retrieve a Websets monitor run's status, type, timestamps, and failure reason.

Get Websets Team Info

Get the authenticated Websets team's identity, current concurrency usage, and limits.

List Agent Run Events

List one page of stored Exa Agent run events as JSON.

List Agent Runs

List one page of your team's Exa Agent runs, ordered newest to oldest.

List API Keys

List the authenticated Exa team's API keys, or retrieve one by API key ID.

List events

Tool to list all events that have occurred in the system.

List imports

Tool to list all imports for the Webset.

List Search Monitor Runs

List one page of a Search API monitor's runs, newest first, including status and output.

List Search Monitors

List one page of the authenticated team's Search API monitors, not Websets monitors.

List Webhook Attempts

List one page of a webhook's delivery attempts in descending order.

List webhooks

Tool to list all webhooks for Websets.

List Webset Items

List one page of a Webset's items, optionally filtered by source ID.

List Websets

List one page of Websets, optionally filtered by ID, external ID, or title.

List Websets Monitor Runs

List one page of runs for a Websets monitor, including status and timestamps.

List Websets Monitors

List one page of Websets monitors, optionally filtered by Webset ID.

Preview Webset

Preview how Exa interprets a search before creating a Webset.

Search

Web search via the Exa engine.

Stop Agent Run

Complete a running ultra-effort Agent run early and return results gathered so far.

Trigger Search Monitor

Trigger an immediate Search API monitor run regardless of its schedule.

Update API Key

Update an API key's name, rate limit, or billing-period spending budget.

Update import

Tool to update an import configuration by ID.

Update Search Monitor

Update a Search API monitor's settings, pause or resume it, or remove its schedule with trigger=null.

Update Webhook

Update a webhook's destination URL, subscribed events, or metadata.

Update Webset

Update a Webset's title or metadata, leaving omitted fields unchanged.

Update Webset Enrichment

Update an enrichment's task, format, options, or metadata on a Webset.

Update Websets Monitor

Update a Websets monitor's status, schedule, search behavior, or metadata.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

With a standalone Exa MCP server, the agents and LLMs can only access a fixed set of Exa tools tied to that server. However, with the Composio Tool Router, agents can dynamically load tools from Exa and many other apps based on the task at hand, all through a single MCP endpoint.

Yes, you can. Hermes fully supports MCP integration. You get structured tool calling, message history handling, and model orchestration while Tool Router takes care of discovering and serving the right Exa tools.

Yes, absolutely. You can configure which Exa scopes and actions are allowed when connecting your account to Composio. You can also bring your own OAuth credentials or API configuration so you keep full control over what the agent can do.

All sensitive data such as tokens, keys, and configuration is fully encrypted at rest and in transit. Composio is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant and follows strict security practices so your Exa data and credentials are handled as safely as possible.

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