What is Metaphor Systems?
Exa is a powerful search API built specifically for AI agents that need real-time, accurate, and structured web data. Unlike traditional search engines, Exa delivers concise, relevant information with minimal noise—perfect for powering smart assistants, coding bots, or research tools. It combines fast web search, deep crawling, and intelligent content extraction in one simple endpoint.
Whether you're building an AI that answers complex questions, analyzes companies, or writes code with up-to-date documentation, Exa gives your agent the right context at the right time—without wasting tokens or processing irrelevant results.
What are the features of Metaphor Systems?
- Real-Time Web Search API: Get fresh, live data from across the web instantly through a single, developer-friendly endpoint.
- Token-Efficient Highlights: Reduces input tokens by up to 90% by returning only the most relevant excerpts—ideal for LLM cost control.
- Structured Output Extraction: Automatically pulls clean, organized data (like company names, CEOs, funding rounds) from unstructured web pages.
- Deep Research Mode: Switch between fast results (<180ms) and thorough, citation-backed deep dives based on your needs.
- Specialized Vertical Coverage: Excels in niche areas like company info, people search, and technical documentation—not just general queries.
- Enterprise-Grade Security: Includes SOC 2 Type II certification, zero data retention (ZDR), and SSO for safe, compliant usage.
- 70M+ Company Enrichments: Access pre-structured business data across millions of organizations worldwide.
What are the use cases of Metaphor Systems?
- Powering AI coding agents with precise, up-to-date documentation from GitHub and developer sites.
- Building lead-generation tools that extract and verify company funding, team size, and location from news sources.
- Creating financial research bots that track startup investments and market trends in real time.
- Enhancing customer support chatbots with grounded, cited answers from official product pages.
- Automating competitive analysis by monitoring competitor announcements and executive changes.
- Supporting academic or market research agents that require trustworthy sources and structured summaries.
How to use Metaphor Systems?
- Sign up for a free account at exa.ai to get your API key.
- Use the API Playground to test queries and see how highlights and structured outputs work.
- Choose between “fast” mode for speed or “deep” mode for comprehensive research in your request parameters.
- Leverage the
contentsparameter to specify output format (e.g., text, highlights, or JSON-like enrichments). - Integrate Exa’s MCP Server or use direct REST calls to connect with your AI agent framework.
- Monitor usage and performance via the Exa Dashboard to optimize token efficiency.
