Set up Exa Search MCP in VS Code

VS Code reads MCP server configuration from the following file:

Create this file if it does not already exist. For VS Code, this is inside your workspace .vscode/settings.json file under the mcp section.

Add the following to your VS Code config file:

{
  "servers": {
    "exa-mcp": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "exa-mcp-server"
      ],
      "env": {
        "EXA_API_KEY": "YOUR_EXA_API_KEY"
      }
    }
  }
}

Exa Search MCP requires the following environment variables:

Restart VS Code. Exa Search MCP should appear in your MCP server list with 3 tools available.

This server adds approximately 1,545 tokens to your context window for tool definitions.