Exa MCP Server for Zed

A Zed extension that connects Zed's Agent Panel to Exa's hosted MCP server (https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp) via mcp-remote, giving your agent web search, page fetching, and Exa Agent tools.

Install

Open Zed's Extensions view (zed: extensions), search for Exa, and click Install.

Tools

Enabled by default:

Tool	Description
web_search_exa	Search the web for any topic and get clean, ready-to-use content
web_fetch_exa	Read a webpage's full content as clean markdown from one or more URLs

Available via the tools setting:

Tool	Description
web_search_advanced_exa	Advanced search with filters, domains, dates, highlights, summaries, and subpage crawling
agent_run	Run an Exa Agent for multi-step research, list-building, enrichment, and structured output (requires an API key)

Note: setting tools replaces the defaults entirely — list every tool you want enabled.

Configuration

Add an exa_api_key and/or tools under the server's settings in settings.json:

{
    "context_servers": {
        "mcp-server-exa-search": {
            "settings": {
                "exa_api_key": "YOUR_API_KEY",
                "tools": "web_search_exa,web_fetch_exa,agent_run"
            }
        }
    }
}

Authentication

The hosted server works anonymously with rate limits — no key required for web_search_exa and web_fetch_exa. An API key from dashboard.exa.ai/api-keys raises your rate limits and unlocks agent_run (Exa Agent). The key is passed to the server as ?exaApiKey=.

Without the extension

Zed natively supports remote MCP servers (with OAuth), so you can skip the extension entirely and add this to settings.json:

{
    "context_servers": {
        "exa": {
            "url": "https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp"
        }
    }
}

Using it in the Agent Panel

Open the Agent Panel settings and check the indicator dot next to the Exa server — green means it's running. Tools can be toggled per agent profile. See the Zed MCP docs for details.

Full tool docs: docs.exa.ai/reference/exa-mcp