Exa for Airtable

Airtable extension powered by Exa that searches the web and populates tables with structured results.

Enter a query, Exa runs a deep search with structured extraction (outputSchema), and the results appear as a new Airtable table — pre-filled with columns like Name, Short Description, Category, Website, Headquarters, Founded, Employees, and Funding.

Setup

1. Install the extension in your Airtable base (Extensions → Add an extension → Build a custom extension)
2. Point the block at this repo's frontend/index.js (entry defined in block.json)
3. Enter your Exa API key (get one free at dashboard.exa.ai)

API calls are proxied through a Vercel serverless function (api/proxy.js deployed at exa-proxy.vercel.app) to handle CORS.

Local Development

npm install
# Start the Airtable block dev server
block run
# In a separate terminal, start the local CORS proxy (uses blocks-cli's self-signed certs)
node proxy.js

The local proxy runs at https://localhost:9005. The production frontend uses the Vercel proxy at exa-proxy.vercel.app instead — to develop locally you'd need to swap PROXY_URL in frontend/index.js.

Requires @airtable/blocks-cli — see Airtable Blocks CLI docs.

How It Works

1. User enters a search query (e.g. "AI startups in healthcare")
2. The extension calls POST /search with type: "deep" and an outputSchema requesting structured company data
3. Results stream into a preview table inside the extension
4. User names the table and clicks "Create Table" to write records to the Airtable base (batched in groups of 50)

All requests include x-exa-integration: airtable header for usage tracking.

License

MIT No Attribution — see LICENSE.md