websets

The Exa Websets MCP Server exposes a set of tools to manage and enrich websets of entities (companies, people, papers) via MCP-compatible clients such as Claude Desktop, Cursor, and Windsurf. It provides webset management (create, list, get, update, delete), item management (list items, get items with enrichment), search operations (create, get, cancel searches), enrichment operations (create, get, cancel enrichments), and monitoring (create monitors). Once configured in your MCP client, you can instruct Claude or other agents to create a webset with an initial search, attach enrichments to extract data points like revenue or funding stage, and set up monitors to refresh data regularly. The server integrates Exa Websets API and exposes actions that align with the documented Tool Schema, so you can craft natural-language prompts that map to the underlying Websets API calls (e.g., create_search, get_webset, create_enrichment).

Prerequisites:

• Node.js v18 or higher
• A consumer API key from Exa (EXA_API_KEY)
• An MCP-compatible client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.)

Installation steps:

1. Install the MCP server via Smithery (recommended):

npx -y @smithery/cli install @exa-labs/websets-mcp-server

2. Run the MCP server locally (example with NPX):

npx -y websets-mcp-server

3. Configure your MCP client to connect to the server (example for Claude Desktop):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "websets": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "websets-mcp-server"
      ],
      "env": {
        "EXA_API_KEY": "your-api-key-here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Optional: If using Claude Code or CW integrations, you can also launch via Claude Code with the API key as an environment variable, or run the server directly with NPX as shown above.

Environment variable: EXA_API_KEY must be set to your Exa API key to access Websets data. The server exposes a REST-like or HTTP-based endpoint depending on your client configuration; see the Tool Schema Reference in the README for exact parameter formats. If you run into authentication errors, verify that the EXA_API_KEY is valid and that network egress to Exa Websets API is allowed. For Claude Desktop users, ensure Developer Mode is enabled and the websets MCP server entry matches the command and arguments shown here. If you update the package name or version, re-run the corresponding install or update commands to refresh the MCP server binary.

Common issues:

• API key not accepted: re-check the key and region scope in Exa dashboard.
• Command not found: ensure npx is installed and that the working directory allows executing global npm binaries.
• Connectivity: verify you can reach the MCP server URL from your client; if using HTTP mode, ensure the URL is reachable and accessible.

Environment variables and configuration options can be adjusted in your client-specific configuration file (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Claude Code) to point to the websets MCP server and pass the EXA_API_KEY securely.