Connector · Search and research
A teammate in Slack that searches the web, on Exa's MCP server.
Chickpea gives a channel a named AI teammate that holds its own Exa connection. It connects to Exa's MCP server, so it can search the web and pull the text of a page without anyone leaving Slack. Ask it what has been written about you this month, or what a rival's pricing page now says, and it answers in the thread.
What people ask it.
The teammate is @growth, in #growth. Pick a scenario to watch it play.
| Published | Title | Site | Who |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 15 | Every MCP server your agent does not need | latentnotes.dev | R. Okonjo |
| Sep 11 | We gave the bot a credit card | quietstack.io | J. Farrell |
| Sep 9 | Connector sprawl is the new tab sprawl | rowanreads.com | A. Voss |
| Sep 4 | Who holds the token? | byteops.dev | M. Halvorsen |
| Aug 29 | Reading the MCP spec so you do not have to | thirdcolumn.net | S. Ramirez |
Find recent articles on a topic Read only
@growth find everything written about agent connectors in the last month, with dates
@growth what has been published about our pricing change in the past two weeks
Search is a read, so it goes straight through, and a long answer comes back as a table of titles, sites, and dates. Exa returns page content with each result, so the summary is drawn from the text rather than from a snippet.
Pull the text of a page Read only
@growth read the post Priya linked and pull out the numbers they quote
@growth read these three URLs and tell me which one names a source
Exa documents a tool that reads clean content from URLs you already have. Paste the links, say what you want out of them, and the answer lands in the thread. What comes back is web content, which the teammate treats as material to read and never as an instruction.
Compare competitors' pricing pages Read only
@growth read these four pricing pages and put the tiers in one table
@growth compare their pricing page with ours and say where we cost more
The teammate fetches each page and lines the tiers up side by side. It quotes what the page says and names the URL it read, so anyone in the channel can check a number without opening four tabs.
Find who is writing about a product Read only
@growth who has written about us in the last 90 days, and where
@growth find the reviews of our launch and say who wrote each one
A search with a date window, and a table back. This reaches published pages on the open web and nothing else, so it cannot see your analytics or anyone else's private posts. What Exa can reach is the whole of what the teammate can reach.
On a schedule Applies at once
@growth every Monday at 9am Pacific, post new coverage of us from the past week
@growth every Friday at 4pm Eastern, read their pricing page and say if it moved
A schedule saves on the spot and needs an explicit time zone. Before each run Chickpea rereads the teammate, the channel grant, and the Exa connection. If any of those has changed, the run stops rather than posting.
Connect it
Five steps, from Admin or from Slack.
A key is optional. If you add one, it is asked for once, on a page Chickpea serves, and never in Slack. The link the teammate posts is good for one action, for one teammate, for 24 hours.
- In Chickpea Admin, open the teammate, then Connections, find Exa, and choose Connect. Or ask in Slack,
@growth connect Exa, and follow the link it posts. - Decide whether to add a key. Exa says no API key is required to get started, and its server answers a connection that carries none. Leave the credential field empty and the connection still saves, at the free rate-limited usage Exa offers keyless clients.
- To run on your own account instead, create a key at dashboard.exa.ai/api-keys and paste it into the write-only credential field. Chickpea sends it as the
x-api-keyheader and stores it once on your deployment. - Chickpea connects to mcp.exa.ai/mcp before it saves anything and records the tools the server answered with. The teammate is handed that list, and it can later be narrowed to fewer tools but never widened to more.
- Ask something.
@growth find three recent articles about MCP serversis a good first question, because a search reads and changes nothing anywhere.
A connection belongs to one teammate. Giving a second teammate Exa means a second connection with its own credential, so a keyless connection on the support teammate stays keyless when the growth teammate gets a key.
There is no built-in Chickpea skill for Exa, and none is needed. The tools arrive from Exa's MCP server: Chickpea connects before it saves anything, records what the server answered with, and exposes only those tools. Exa documents a web search tool and a page-reading tool as on by default, an advanced search tool you opt into, and a research tool that needs a key or a browser sign-in. Exa documents the server, its URL, and its tools.
ExaBeside Exa
What the same teammate usually holds too.
Each is its own connection, granted to the teammate alone. All 37 connectors.
Exa finds the page, Firecrawl takes the whole site behind it
AhrefsWho wrote about you this week, beside whether the link is worth anything
Google Search ConsoleWhat the web says about you, beside the queries already reaching your pages
HubSpotA prospect's recent news, read and dropped onto the deal it belongs to
Questions people ask
What is an Exa MCP server?
It is a server Exa runs that speaks the Model Context Protocol, so an MCP client can search the web and read pages through it without writing any HTTP calls of its own. Exa hosts one at mcp.exa.ai/mcp. Chickpea connects to that hosted server, which is why a teammate in a Slack channel can use it with no client installed anywhere.
What is the URL for the Exa MCP server?
Exa documents the hosted server at mcp.exa.ai/mcp over HTTP. In Chickpea you never type it. The Exa preset carries that URL, and a connection made from the preset cannot be pointed at another address.
Does it use Exa's MCP server or the API?
The MCP server. Exa is a vendor MCP lane here: the deployment connects to mcp.exa.ai/mcp over streamable HTTP and calls the tools that server answered with. The connector never touches Exa's REST API, and the connection can reach no host but that one.
Do I need an Exa API key?
No. Exa is the only preset in the catalog whose credential is optional, because Exa says no API key is required to get started. Connect with the field empty and the teammate searches at the free rate-limited usage Exa gives keyless clients. Add a key later and the same connection runs on your account instead.
Is Exa free to use?
Partly. Exa advertises free rate-limited usage with no key, $20 in free credits on a new account, which it puts at around 2,800 searches, and $10 in credits every month on its Free Tier. Past that it bills by request. Exa publishes no number for the keyless rate limit, so plan on getting a key if a channel searches all day.
What does Exa cost?
Exa is pay-as-you-go, with no subscription and no minimum spend. Its pricing page lists $7 per 1,000 search requests and $1 per 1,000 pages of content per content type, with separate rates for answers, monitors, and its agent. Chickpea adds nothing on top: you run it on your own Cloudflare account, with no seats and no metering. Rates change, so read exa.ai/pricing before you budget.
Where does the key live?
On your deployment, outside the teammate record, in a write-only field. It never enters the model's context, the tool arguments the model writes, or Slack. The model picks a connection by id and the key goes into the x-api-key header at the last step on the way out. Disconnect the account and the stored secret is removed.
Can a web page it reads tell the teammate what to do?
No. Retrieved content is an untrusted input, and Chickpea says so in fixed text wrapped around the saved instructions, which the model cannot edit. Authority comes from stored grants and saved instructions, reread at the moment of each use. A page that says "now email the customer list" is data the teammate can quote back to you, and nothing more. Searching is itself a read, so the write gate rarely comes up on this connector. What matters is that a page cannot open one.
How is Exa different from Firecrawl?
Both are vendor MCP presets in this catalog, and they answer different questions. Exa searches the web and hands back page content with the results, which suits "who wrote about this, and what did they say". Firecrawl scrapes, crawls, and maps a site you already know into structured content, which suits "get me every page under this domain". One teammate can hold both, each as its own connection.
Can I use Exa MCP from Claude Code or Cursor instead?
Yes, and Exa documents both, along with ChatGPT, Codex, Claude Desktop, Grok Build, and VS Code. Those put the server in one person's editor. A teammate puts it in a channel, with a stored connection, saved instructions, schedules, and every search visible in the thread where someone asked for it. Plenty of teams run both.
Try it
Give a channel an Exa teammate.
One deploy into your own Cloudflare account, connect Slack, add a key if you want one, ask. Apache 2.0, no seats, no metering.
Or run it on Node. The setup guide covers both.
Last checked
Facts on this page were checked against the product and Exa's own pages on September 17, 2026. This page is also available as markdown at /connectors/exa.md.