Griptape WebSearch Driver: Exa

Exa is a search engine built specifically for AI agents - instead of just returning links like Google, it returns content, and it searches by meaning rather than keywords. For a Griptape agent in ComfyUI, that's the difference between "here are some URLs" and "here's the actual paragraph you needed." If you've been feeding your agent web content and getting frustrated with keyword search misses, this driver is worth the API key. It's the most configurable of the three web-search drivers in this pack, and the one that makes the most sense when you want your agent grounded in current, real-world info.

How it works

The node builds an ExaWebSearchDriver, and the inputs read like a power user's wishlist:

• type (default neural) - keyword, neural, or auto. Neural is Exa's embedding-based semantic search, the whole point of the service; auto lets Exa decide; keyword is the literal fallback.
• num_results (default 10) - how many results come back. This one you'll actually tune.
• category - a beta filter for the kind of content: company, research paper, news, github, tweet, movie, song, personal site, pdf. Search GitHub issues vs. papers without a million irrelevant hits.
• highlights (default false) - asks Exa to extract relevant excerpts from each result. Cheap, and exactly what an agent wants when you're about to stuff this into a prompt.
• use_autoprompt (default false) - lets Exa rewrite your query into a better one (neural/auto only). Worth enabling once you trust it.
• include_domains / exclude_domains / include_text / exclude_text - multiline lists to narrow the search.
• api_key_env_var (default EXA_API_KEY) - the env var name holding your key.

Output is DRIVER (WEB_SEARCH_DRIVER). It doesn't search on its own - it plugs into the Griptape Web Search tool node, which is what actually runs the search and hands results to an agent.

The one trap

EXA_API_KEY is mandatory, and the node will raise an exception if it's missing rather than failing softly - set it in ComfyUI's Settings → Griptape section (or your environment) before wiring anything. The good news: the settings screen auto-detects keys already in your environment. If you search and get nothing, check the category filter - a github category will happily return zero results for a query that isn't code.

Install

Pack install as usual: ComfyUI Manager → search "Griptape" → INSTALL, or git clone https://github.com/griptape-ai/ComfyUI-Griptape into custom_nodes, then restart. Dependencies (griptape[all], python-dotenv) install alongside, and the README's torch fix is the go-to if ComfyUI errors after install. Grab your Exa key from exa.ai - there's a free tier - and you're searching semantically instead of just googling.