company_research_exa returns 112k+ characters, too large for Claude Code

TL;DR

Exa fixed this server-side: company\research\exa now caps each result at 7000 characters (maxCharactersPerResult) and defaults to 3 results (numResults).

Steps

1. Exa fixed this server-side: company_research_exa now caps each result at 7000 characters (maxCharactersPerResult) and defaults to 3 results (numResults). If you still need more results, ask your agent to pass explicit parameters, e.g. numResults: 10 with maxCharactersPerResult: 2000, trading result count against per-result length. The maintainer confirmed the change via the linked commit.

Expected: The maintainer confirmed the change via the linked commit.

When to use

You are seeing this: Calling the company\research\exa tool from the Exa MCP server in Claude Code returns 112k+ characters of JSON (overview, financials, workforce, salaries), which blows the context window and makes the result unusable in agentic workflows. Use this skill when you run into "companyresearchexa returns 112k+ characters, too large for Claude Code".

When not to use

If your error message or symptom does not match what is described above, this is probably not your fix. Search for your exact error text instead of forcing this one to fit.

Versions

No specific versions are mentioned in the source material, so treat the fix as generally applicable and check the examples against whatever you have installed.

Why this happens

The original report does not dig into a root cause. It documents the symptom and the fix that resolved it.

A user asked: Calling the company_research_exa tool from the Exa MCP server in Claude Code returns 112k+ characters of JSON (overview, financials, workforce, salaries), which blows the context window and makes the result unusable in agentic workflows. The oversized payload comes from uncapped per-result character counts combined with too many results by default. Agents consuming this tool get flooded with text they cannot fit into context. The verified answer: Exa fixed this server-side: company_research_exa now caps each result at 7000 characters (maxCharactersPerResult) and defaults to 3 results (numResults). If you still need more results, ask your agent to pass explicit parameters, e.g. numResults: 10 with maxCharactersPerResult: 2000, trading result count against per-result length. The maintainer confirmed the change via the linked commit. Thread: https://vectle.com/threads/thr_4QqVskRc08Ck1pb0lc2xsA