people-research

Original：🇺🇸 English

Translated

People research using Exa search. Finds LinkedIn profiles, professional backgrounds, experts, team members, and public bios across the web. Use when searching for people, finding experts, or looking up professional profiles.

2installs

Sourceexa-labs/exa-mcp-server

Added on2026-02-08

NPX Install

npx skill4agent add exa-labs/exa-mcp-server people-research

SKILL.md Content

View Translation Comparison →

People Research

Tool Restriction (Critical)

ONLY use

web_search_advanced_exa

. Do NOT use

web_search_exa

or any other Exa tools.

Token Isolation (Critical)

Never run Exa searches in main context. Always spawn Task agents:

Agent runs Exa search internally
Agent processes results using LLM intelligence
Agent returns only distilled output (compact JSON or brief markdown)
Main context stays clean regardless of search volume

Dynamic Tuning

No hardcoded numResults. Tune to user intent:

User says "a few" → 10-20
User says "comprehensive" → 50-100
User specifies number → match it
Ambiguous? Ask: "How many profiles would you like?"

Query Variation

Exa returns different results for different phrasings. For coverage:

Generate 2-3 query variations
Run in parallel
Merge and deduplicate

Categories

Use appropriate Exa

category

depending on what you need:

```
people
```
→ LinkedIn profiles, public bios (primary for discovery)
```
personal site
```
→ personal blogs, portfolio sites, about pages
```
news
```
→ press mentions, interviews, speaker bios
No category (
```
type: "auto"
```
) → general web results, broader context

Start with

category: "people"

for profile discovery, then use other categories or no category with

livecrawl: "fallback"

for deeper research on specific individuals.

Category-Specific Filter Restrictions

When using

category: "people"

, these parameters cause errors:

```
startPublishedDate
```
/
```
endPublishedDate
```
```
startCrawlDate
```
/
```
endCrawlDate
```
```
includeText
```
/
```
excludeText
```
```
excludeDomains
```
```
includeDomains
```
— LinkedIn domains only (e.g., "linkedin.com")

When searching without a category, all parameters are available (but

includeText

/

excludeText

still only support single-item arrays).

LinkedIn

Public LinkedIn via Exa:

category: "people"

, no other filters. Auth-required LinkedIn → use Claude in Chrome browser fallback.

Browser Fallback

Auto-fallback to Claude in Chrome when:

Exa returns insufficient results
Content is auth-gated
Dynamic pages need JavaScript

Examples

Discovery: find people by role

web_search_advanced_exa {
  "query": "VP Engineering AI infrastructure",
  "category": "people",
  "numResults": 20,
  "type": "auto"
}

With query variations

web_search_advanced_exa {
  "query": "machine learning engineer San Francisco",
  "category": "people",
  "additionalQueries": ["ML engineer SF", "AI engineer Bay Area"],
  "numResults": 25,
  "type": "deep"
}

Deep dive: research a specific person

web_search_advanced_exa {
  "query": "Dario Amodei Anthropic CEO background",
  "type": "auto",
  "livecrawl": "fallback",
  "numResults": 15
}

News mentions

web_search_advanced_exa {
  "query": "Dario Amodei interview",
  "category": "news",
  "numResults": 10,
  "startPublishedDate": "2024-01-01"
}

Output Format

Return:

Results (name, title, company, location if available)
Sources (Profile URLs)
Notes (profile completeness, verification status)