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How to integrate Exa MCP with Mastra AI

Connect Mastra AI 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

This guide walks you through connecting Exa to Mastra AI using the Composio tool router. By the end, you'll have a working Exa agent that can search the web, generate answers, fetch page contents, build and enrich Websets, and set up search monitors through natural language commands.

This guide will help you understand how to give your Mastra AI agent real control over a Exa account through Composio's Exa MCP server.

Before we dive in, let's take a quick look at the key ideas and tools involved.

Also integrate Exa with

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TL;DR

Here's what you'll learn:
  • Set up your environment so Mastra, OpenAI, and Composio work together
  • Create a Tool Router session in Composio that exposes Exa tools
  • Connect Mastra's MCP client to the Composio generated MCP URL
  • Fetch Exa tool definitions and attach them as a toolset
  • Build a Mastra agent that can reason, call tools, and return structured results
  • Run an interactive CLI where you can chat with your Exa agent

What is Mastra AI?

Mastra AI is a TypeScript framework for building AI agents with tool support. It provides a clean API for creating agents that can use external services through MCP.

Key features include:

  • MCP Client: Built-in support for Model Context Protocol servers
  • Toolsets: Organize tools into logical groups
  • Step Callbacks: Monitor and debug agent execution
  • OpenAI Integration: Works with OpenAI models via @ai-sdk/openai

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.

What is the Composio tool router, and how does it fit here?

What is Composio SDK?

Composio's Composio SDK helps agents find the right tools for a task at runtime. You can plug in multiple toolkits (like Gmail, HubSpot, and GitHub), and the agent will identify the relevant app and action to complete multi-step workflows. This can reduce token usage and improve the reliability of tool calls. Read more here: Getting started with Composio SDK

The tool router generates a secure MCP URL that your agents can access to perform actions.

How the Composio SDK works

The Composio SDK follows a three-phase workflow:

  1. Discovery: Searches for tools matching your task and returns relevant toolkits with their details.
  2. Authentication: Checks for active connections. If missing, creates an auth config and returns a connection URL via Auth Link.
  3. Execution: Executes the action using the authenticated connection.

Step-by-step Guide

Step by step09 STEPS
1

Prerequisites

Before starting, make sure you have:
  • Node.js 18 or higher
  • A Composio account with an active API key
  • An OpenAI API key
  • Basic familiarity with TypeScript
2

Getting API Keys for OpenAI and Composio

OpenAI API Key
  • Go to the OpenAI dashboard and create an API key.
  • You need credits or a connected billing setup to use the models.
  • Store the key somewhere safe.
Composio API Key
  • Log in to the Composio dashboard.
  • Go to Settings and copy your API key.
  • This key lets your Mastra agent talk to Composio and reach Exa through MCP.
3

Install dependencies

bash
npm install @composio/core @mastra/core @mastra/mcp @ai-sdk/openai dotenv

Install the required packages.

What's happening:

  • @composio/core is the Composio SDK for creating MCP sessions
  • @mastra/core provides the Agent class
  • @mastra/mcp is Mastra's MCP client
  • @ai-sdk/openai is the model wrapper for OpenAI
  • dotenv loads environment variables from .env
4

Set up environment variables

bash
COMPOSIO_API_KEY=your_composio_api_key_here
COMPOSIO_USER_ID=your_user_id_here
OPENAI_API_KEY=your_openai_api_key_here

Create a .env file in your project root.

What's happening:

  • COMPOSIO_API_KEY authenticates your requests to Composio
  • COMPOSIO_USER_ID tells Composio which user this session belongs to
  • OPENAI_API_KEY lets the Mastra agent call OpenAI models
5

Import libraries and validate environment

typescript
import "dotenv/config";
import { openai } from "@ai-sdk/openai";
import { Agent } from "@mastra/core/agent";
import { MCPClient } from "@mastra/mcp";
import { Composio } from "@composio/core";
import * as readline from "readline";

import type { AiMessageType } from "@mastra/core/agent";

const openaiAPIKey = process.env.OPENAI_API_KEY;
const composioAPIKey = process.env.COMPOSIO_API_KEY;
const composioUserID = process.env.COMPOSIO_USER_ID;

if (!openaiAPIKey) throw new Error("OPENAI_API_KEY is not set");
if (!composioAPIKey) throw new Error("COMPOSIO_API_KEY is not set");
if (!composioUserID) throw new Error("COMPOSIO_USER_ID is not set");

const composio = new Composio({
  apiKey: composioAPIKey as string,
});
What's happening:
  • dotenv/config auto loads your .env so process.env.* is available
  • openai gives you a Mastra compatible model wrapper
  • Agent is the Mastra agent that will call tools and produce answers
  • MCPClient connects Mastra to your Composio MCP server
  • Composio is used to create a Tool Router session
6

Create a Tool Router session for Exa

typescript
async function main() {
  const session = await composio.create(
    composioUserID as string,
    {
      toolkits: ["exa"],
    },
  );

  const composioMCPUrl = session.mcp.url;
  console.log("Exa MCP URL:", composioMCPUrl);
What's happening:
  • create spins up a short-lived MCP HTTP endpoint for this user
  • The toolkits array contains "exa" for Exa access
  • session.mcp.url is the MCP URL that Mastra's MCPClient will connect to
7

Configure Mastra MCP client and fetch tools

typescript
const mcpClient = new MCPClient({
    id: composioUserID as string,
    servers: {
      nasdaq: {
        url: new URL(composioMCPUrl),
        requestInit: {
          headers: session.mcp.headers,
        },
      },
    },
    timeout: 30_000,
  });

console.log("Fetching MCP tools from Composio...");
const composioTools = await mcpClient.getTools();
console.log("Number of tools:", Object.keys(composioTools).length);
What's happening:
  • MCPClient takes an id for this client and a list of MCP servers
  • The headers property includes the x-api-key for authentication
  • getTools fetches the tool definitions exposed by the Exa toolkit
8

Create the Mastra agent

typescript
const agent = new Agent({
    name: "exa-mastra-agent",
    instructions: "You are an AI agent with Exa tools via Composio.",
    model: "openai/gpt-5",
  });
What's happening:
  • Agent is the core Mastra agent
  • name is just an identifier for logging and debugging
  • instructions guide the agent to use tools instead of only answering in natural language
  • model uses openai("gpt-5") to configure the underlying LLM
9

Set up interactive chat interface

typescript
let messages: AiMessageType[] = [];

console.log("Chat started! Type 'exit' or 'quit' to end.\n");

const rl = readline.createInterface({
  input: process.stdin,
  output: process.stdout,
  prompt: "> ",
});

rl.prompt();

rl.on("line", async (userInput: string) => {
  const trimmedInput = userInput.trim();

  if (["exit", "quit", "bye"].includes(trimmedInput.toLowerCase())) {
    console.log("\nGoodbye!");
    rl.close();
    process.exit(0);
  }

  if (!trimmedInput) {
    rl.prompt();
    return;
  }

  messages.push({
    id: crypto.randomUUID(),
    role: "user",
    content: trimmedInput,
  });

  console.log("\nAgent is thinking...\n");

  try {
    const response = await agent.generate(messages, {
      toolsets: {
        exa: composioTools,
      },
      maxSteps: 8,
    });

    const { text } = response;

    if (text && text.trim().length > 0) {
      console.log(`Agent: ${text}\n`);
        messages.push({
          id: crypto.randomUUID(),
          role: "assistant",
          content: text,
        });
      }
    } catch (error) {
      console.error("\nError:", error);
    }

    rl.prompt();
  });

  rl.on("close", async () => {
    console.log("\nSession ended.");
    await mcpClient.disconnect();
    process.exit(0);
  });
}

main().catch((err) => {
  console.error("Fatal error:", err);
  process.exit(1);
});
What's happening:
  • messages keeps the full conversation history in Mastra's expected format
  • agent.generate runs the agent with conversation history and Exa toolsets
  • maxSteps limits how many tool calls the agent can take in a single run
  • onStepFinish is a hook that prints intermediate steps for debugging

Complete Code

Here's the complete code to get you started with Exa and Mastra AI:

typescript
import "dotenv/config";
import { openai } from "@ai-sdk/openai";
import { Agent } from "@mastra/core/agent";
import { MCPClient } from "@mastra/mcp";
import { Composio } from "@composio/core";
import * as readline from "readline";

import type { AiMessageType } from "@mastra/core/agent";

const openaiAPIKey = process.env.OPENAI_API_KEY;
const composioAPIKey = process.env.COMPOSIO_API_KEY;
const composioUserID = process.env.COMPOSIO_USER_ID;

if (!openaiAPIKey) throw new Error("OPENAI_API_KEY is not set");
if (!composioAPIKey) throw new Error("COMPOSIO_API_KEY is not set");
if (!composioUserID) throw new Error("COMPOSIO_USER_ID is not set");

const composio = new Composio({ apiKey: composioAPIKey as string });

async function main() {
  const session = await composio.create(composioUserID as string, {
    toolkits: ["exa"],
  });

  const composioMCPUrl = session.mcp.url;

  const mcpClient = new MCPClient({
    id: composioUserID as string,
    servers: {
      exa: {
        url: new URL(composioMCPUrl),
        requestInit: {
          headers: session.mcp.headers,
        },
      },
    },
    timeout: 30_000,
  });

  const composioTools = await mcpClient.getTools();

  const agent = new Agent({
    name: "exa-mastra-agent",
    instructions: "You are an AI agent with Exa tools via Composio.",
    model: "openai/gpt-5",
  });

  let messages: AiMessageType[] = [];

  const rl = readline.createInterface({
    input: process.stdin,
    output: process.stdout,
    prompt: "> ",
  });

  rl.prompt();

  rl.on("line", async (input: string) => {
    const trimmed = input.trim();
    if (["exit", "quit"].includes(trimmed.toLowerCase())) {
      rl.close();
      return;
    }

    messages.push({ id: crypto.randomUUID(), role: "user", content: trimmed });

    const { text } = await agent.generate(messages, {
      toolsets: { exa: composioTools },
      maxSteps: 8,
    });

    if (text) {
      console.log(`Agent: ${text}\n`);
      messages.push({ id: crypto.randomUUID(), role: "assistant", content: text });
    }

    rl.prompt();
  });

  rl.on("close", async () => {
    await mcpClient.disconnect();
    process.exit(0);
  });
}

main();

Conclusion

You've built a Mastra AI agent that can interact with Exa through Composio's Tool Router. You can extend this further by:
  • Adding other toolkits like Gmail, Slack, or GitHub
  • Building a web-based chat interface around this agent
  • Using multiple MCP endpoints to enable cross-app workflows
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.

FRAMEWORKS

How to build Exa MCP Agent with another framework

Claude Code logo

Claude Code

Use Exa MCP with Claude Code

Claude Cowork logo

Claude Cowork

Use Exa MCP with Claude Cowork

OpenAI Agents SDK logo

OpenAI Agents SDK

Use Exa MCP with OpenAI Agents SDK

Claude Agent SDK logo

Claude Agent SDK

Use Exa MCP with Claude Agent SDK

Grok Bot logo

Grok Bot

Use Exa MCP with Grok Bot

Muse logo

Muse

Use Exa MCP with Muse

Codex logo

Codex

Use Exa MCP with Codex

OpenClaw logo

OpenClaw

Use Exa MCP with OpenClaw

Hermes logo

Hermes

Use Exa MCP with Hermes

Atomic Agent logo

Atomic Agent

Use Exa MCP with Atomic Agent

Google ADK logo

Google ADK

Use Exa MCP with Google ADK

LangChain logo

LangChain

Use Exa MCP with LangChain

Vercel AI SDK logo

Vercel AI SDK

Use Exa MCP with Vercel AI SDK

LlamaIndex logo

LlamaIndex

Use Exa MCP with LlamaIndex

CrewAI logo

CrewAI

Use Exa MCP with CrewAI

Pydantic AI logo

Pydantic AI

Use Exa MCP with Pydantic AI

AutoGen logo

AutoGen

Use Exa MCP with AutoGen

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. Mastra AI 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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