VS Code Exa Search crawling_exa

Add Exa Search to VS Code

1. 01

   Open .vscode/mcp.json and merge this in. Keep any servers already there.

{
  "inputs": [
    {
      "type": "promptString",
      "id": "exa-api-key",
      "description": "EXA_API_KEY",
      "password": true
    }
  ],
  "servers": {
    "exa-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "exa-mcp-server"
      ],
      "env": {
        "EXA_API_KEY": "${input:exa-api-key}"
      }
    }
  }
}

2. 02

   Save the file and restart VS Code.

3. 03

   Ask for something crawling_exa does. VS Code lists the server's tools on connect and calls crawling_exa itself — you do not invoke it by name.

4. 04

   If nothing happens, check the server is running and that Exa Search's identifier in your config matches the one above exactly.

VS Code prompts for each input the first time the server starts, so no secret is written to the file. VS Code docs

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