Code Context (Exa)

Find code examples, API usage, documentation, error fixes, and GitHub repos via Exa. Calls the Exa REST API through a local script; no MCP server needed, only an EXA_API_KEY.

Setup (once)

bash
export EXA_API_KEY=your-key            # or EXA_API_KEY=... in a .env at the repo root

Get a key at https://dashboard.exa.ai/api-keys. Shared details: exa-native-base.

Run it

bash
python scripts/code_context.py "<query — always include language + library>" [-n N] [-c github] [--text]

Examples:

bash
python scripts/code_context.py "Stripe API create subscription Node.js code example" -n 8
python scripts/code_context.py "React hydration mismatch server client explanation fix" -n 10
python scripts/code_context.py "production-ready vector database in Rust" -c github -n 10

Always include the programming language and framework/library in the query — it sharply improves relevance. No default category (most code/docs/error pages live on the open web); add -c github to discover repositories.

Query patterns

bash
# API usage
python scripts/code_context.py "Stripe API create subscription Node.js code example" -n 5

# Error resolution (describe the error + stack)
python scripts/code_context.py "Next.js 'window is not defined' SSR error fix" -n 10

# GitHub implementations / repos
python scripts/code_context.py "open-source example project using LangGraph" -c github -n 10

Reading docs you already know

When you have the doc/repo URL, skip search and read it directly:

bash
python ../exa-native-base/scripts/exa.py contents https://fastapi.tiangolo.com/tutorial/background-tasks/ --text

Override categories with -c

(no default) general web — best for docs, tutorials, Stack Overflow, error fixes · github — repositories · pdf — spec/RFC PDFs.

After you get results

• Prefer official docs and well-starred repos; treat results as similarity, not validation — open the page and confirm the snippet actually solves the problem before relying on it.
• For a multi-part investigation (e.g. "how do teams do X across libraries"), dispatch subagents per library and compare approaches.
• Deliver: the working snippet/answer first, then the source links it came from.