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Agent skill

Exa Reference Architecture

by jeremylongshore in jeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace

Design an Exa architecture that separates query policy, retrieval, content handling, asynchronous state, citations, and evidence.

MITAuto-check passedDevelopment

Install Exa Reference Architecture

skills CLI
$ npx skills add jeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace --skill exa-reference-architecture -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install jeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace exa-reference-architecture --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/.curated/exa-reference-architecture .claude/skills/exa-reference-architecture && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
exa-reference-architecture
GitHub stars
2.8k
Token cost
~1.2k tokens
SKILL.md length
556 words
Files
2 (incl. references)
Skills in repo
3,342
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Design an Exa architecture that separates query policy, retrieval, content handling, asynchronous state, citations, and evidence.

  • Works in 6 steps: Classify the user outcome, latency… → Select the narrowest Exa product that… → Place policy and credential enforcement… → …
  • Reviewing this Exa boundary
  • SKILL.md covers Overview, Prerequisites, Current Contract and Authentication, plus 8 more sections
  • Needs EXA_API_KEY

What it does

Exa Reference Architecture is an agent skill from jeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace. Design an Exa architecture that separates query policy, retrieval, content handling, asynchronous state, citations, and evidence. Use when operating or reviewing this Exa boundary. Trigger with "Exa reference architecture", "review Exa reference architecture", or "fix Exa reference architecture".

Its SKILL.md is about 1.2k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 2 other files, including reference files (for example `references/official-docs.md`). Compatibility notes: Designed for Claude Code; live Exa work requires network access

It sits in Development, covering Async programming, Software architecture and Citation management. The repository describes itself as: Model-agnostic agent-skills platform with a harness-free canonical layer, verified adapters, and the ccpi package manager. Explore at tonsofskills.com. The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Reviewing this Exa boundary
  • With Exa reference architecture
  • Review Exa reference architecture
  • Fix Exa reference architecture

Example prompts

  • “Exa reference architecture”
  • “review Exa reference architecture”
  • “fix Exa reference architecture”
  • “/exa-reference-architecture”

Requirements

  • A credential in EXA_API_KEY
  • Compatibility (from SKILL.md): Designed for Claude Code; live Exa work requires network access
  • Pre-approved tools (allowed-tools): Read, Glob, Grep, Write, Edit

Workflow steps

6 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

  1. Classify the user outcome, latency class, data sensitivity, freshness, and volume.
  2. Select the narrowest Exa product that satisfies the outcome.
  3. Place policy and credential enforcement before the vendor adapter.
  4. Separate retrieved content from content-free operational metadata and citations.
  5. Persist only necessary asynchronous IDs and define terminal-state reconciliation.
  6. Diagram failure, retention, deletion, webhook, cost, and rollback boundaries.

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit cfae287. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves these tools, so the agent can use them without asking each time:

    • Read
    • Glob
    • Grep
    • Write
    • Edit

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names these keys or tokens, usually read from environment variables:

    • EXA_API_KEY

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

  • Compatibility

    Designed for Claude Code; live Exa work requires network access

    From compatibility in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

Context cost

Exa Reference Architecture loads about 1.2k tokens when it runs, and up to ~1.7k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 81 tokens; SKILL.md has 556 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~81
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.2k
With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them
~1.7k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from jeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace at commit cfae287, republished under its MIT licence (© jeremylongshore). 556 words, ~1,226 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/exa-reference-architecture/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 1 other file; get the full folder from GitHub.
name
exa-reference-architecture
description
Design an Exa architecture that separates query policy, retrieval, content handling, asynchronous state, citations, and evidence. Use when operating or reviewing this Exa boundary. Trigger with "Exa reference architecture", "review Exa reference architecture", or "fix Exa reference architecture".
allowed-tools
Read, Glob, Grep, Write, Edit
compatibility
Designed for Claude Code; live Exa work requires network access
argument-hint
<use-case> <latency-class> <data-class>
version
1.12.0
license
MIT
author
Jeremy Longshore <jeremy@intentsolutions.io>
tags
saas, exa
model
inherit
effort
high

Exa Retrieval Architecture Boundary

Overview

Design an Exa architecture that separates query policy, retrieval, content handling, asynchronous state, citations, and evidence. Treat credentials, queries, retrieved content, generated output, spend, and destructive state as separately governed boundaries.

Prerequisites

  • The target repository, environment, Exa team, product surface, and accountable owner.
  • The workload's data classification, latency and freshness promise, cost ceiling, and retention policy.
  • Current first-party documentation plus credentials only for a narrowly approved live check.

Current Contract

Use Search for ranked discovery, Contents for known URLs, Answer for a direct cited response, Agent for multi-step research, Monitors for recurring discovery, Websets for verified and enriched sets, and Batch for enabled enterprise offline volume. Each product has distinct lifecycle and trust boundaries.

Authentication

For normal REST work, inject EXA_API_KEY from an approved server-side secret manager and send it only as Authorization: Bearer to the configured first-party Exa API host. Team Management service keys, hosted MCP OAuth or enterprise managed authorization, and payment-protocol calls are separate trust models. Never print, commit, place in a URL, or expose a credential to an untrusted client.

Instructions

  1. Classify the user outcome, latency class, data sensitivity, freshness, and volume.
  2. Select the narrowest Exa product that satisfies the outcome.
  3. Place policy and credential enforcement before the vendor adapter.
  4. Separate retrieved content from content-free operational metadata and citations.
  5. Persist only necessary asynchronous IDs and define terminal-state reconciliation.
  6. Diagram failure, retention, deletion, webhook, cost, and rollback boundaries.

Tool Discipline

Use Read, Glob, and Grep to inspect repository code, configuration, fixtures, and evidence. Use Write and Edit only for approved implementation or documentation changes. Do not call Exa, run paid research, create or alter a Monitor, Webset, Agent run, Batch, team, member, API key, budget, webhook, or deployment merely because this skill was invoked.

Approval Boundaries

Require an accountable owner before live queries involving sensitive intent, production credentials, spend or rate-limit changes, forced live crawling, generated summaries, external delivery, deployment, member or key changes, schedule creation, or destructive cancellation, stopping, deletion, or revocation. Read-only repository inspection and synthetic offline validation do not authorize live vendor actions.

Show full SKILL.md (206 more words)Show less

Failure Modes

  • Do not use Agent when a bounded Search or Contents call is sufficient.
  • Do not feed untrusted retrieved text directly into privileged tool execution.
  • Do not share one queue and retry policy across interactive and offline products.

Output

Return the operation scope, environment, team and product surface, authorization class, contract and policy decisions, deterministic validation results, content-free identifiers, status and cost counts, risks, cleanup or rollback state, and a concise pass or fail receipt. Exclude credentials, raw queries, prompts, presigned URLs, retrieved content, generated output, and customer-derived data unless separately approved.

Example

  • A RAG service uses Search highlights first, Contents only for selected URLs, a citation-preserving model boundary, and a separate audit stream.
  • Finish with request or resource IDs, assertion counts, cost and terminal state, rollback or deletion status, and the decision owner; never reproduce secrets or retrieved content.

Validation

Rerun the smallest relevant deterministic test, compare actual behavior with the requested outcome and current first-party contract, verify sensitive fields are absent from evidence, and confirm deadlines, terminal state, downstream retention, and rollback before reporting success.

References

Review the dated first-party evidence map before relying on any endpoint, parameter, search type, price, limit, beta, compliance, identity, retry, or lifecycle claim.

© jeremylongshore, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 1 other file (references) in skills/.curated/exa-reference-architecture of jeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace.

  • SKILL.md
  • references/official-docs.md

Open the folder on GitHubat commit cfae287

Compare with similar skills

Exa Reference Architecture next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Exa Reference Architecture compared with similar skills
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cmux Swift Package Architecturemanaflow-ai/cmux28k1 repos~4.2kAutomated safety check: PassCustom licence
Archify Diagramstt-a1i/archify81k—~2.9kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Electron Multi-Process ArchitectureiOfficeAI/AionUi33k1 repos~1.8kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0

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Categories

Questions about Exa Reference Architecture

What does Exa Reference Architecture do?

Design an Exa architecture that separates query policy, retrieval, content handling, asynchronous state, citations, and evidence. Exa Reference Architecture is an agent skill from jeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace. Design an Exa architecture that separates query policy, retrieval, content handling, asynchronous state, citations, and evidence.

When should I use Exa Reference Architecture?

Exa Reference Architecture fits situations like: reviewing this Exa boundary; with Exa reference architecture; review Exa reference architecture; fix Exa reference architecture.

How do I install Exa Reference Architecture in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add jeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace --skill exa-reference-architecture -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/.curated/exa-reference-architecture in jeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace) into .claude/skills/exa-reference-architecture in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Exa Reference Architecture in Codex?

Run `npx skills add jeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace --skill exa-reference-architecture -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/.curated/exa-reference-architecture in jeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace) into .agents/skills/exa-reference-architecture in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Exa Reference Architecture in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add jeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace --skill exa-reference-architecture -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/exa-reference-architecture, .gemini/skills/exa-reference-architecture, .github/skills/exa-reference-architecture and .opencode/skills/exa-reference-architecture in your project.

What does Exa Reference Architecture need to run?

Going by SKILL.md and its folder, Exa Reference Architecture needs credentials named EXA_API_KEY. Our summary lists: A credential in EXA_API_KEY. Its frontmatter pre-approves these tools: Read, Glob, Grep, Write, Edit. Compatibility (from SKILL.md): Designed for Claude Code; live Exa work requires network access.

Does Exa Reference Architecture access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Exa Reference Architecture safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Exa Reference Architecture use?

Exa Reference Architecture is published under the MIT licence (declared in SKILL.md). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Exa Reference Architecture use?

About 1.2k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 4.9k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full. Its references folder adds about 459 tokens, read only when the agent opens those files.

What are the alternatives to Exa Reference Architecture?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Exa Reference Architecture: Akka.NET Best Practices (Aaronontheweb/dotnet-skills, 1.2k stars), cmux Socket Policy (manaflow-ai/cmux, 28k stars), cmux Swift Package Architecture (manaflow-ai/cmux, 28k stars) and Archify Diagrams (tt-a1i/archify, 81k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Exa Reference Architecture?

jeremylongshore (a GitHub user) maintains it in jeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace, which has 2,827 GitHub stars. The repository holds 3,342 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on October 10, 2026.

Source: jeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.