Exa Observability

Overview

Monitor Exa search API performance, result quality, and cost efficiency. Key metrics: search latency by type (neural ~500-2000ms, keyword ~200-500ms), result count per query, cache hit rates, error rates by status code, and daily search volume for budget tracking.

Prerequisites

• Exa API integration in production
• Metrics backend (Prometheus, Datadog, or OpenTelemetry)
• Alerting system (PagerDuty, Slack, or equivalent)

Instructions

Step 1: Instrument the Exa Client

import Exa from "exa-js";

const exa = new Exa(process.env.EXA_API_KEY);

// Generic metrics emitter (replace with your metrics library)
function emitMetric(name: string, value: number, tags: Record<string, string>) {
  // Prometheus: histogram/counter.observe(value, tags)
  // Datadog: dogstatsd.histogram(name, value, tags)
  // OpenTelemetry: meter.createHistogram(name).record(value, tags)
  console.log(`[metric] ${name}=${value}`, tags);
}

async function trackedSearch(query: string, options: any = {}) {
  const start = performance.now();
  const type = options.type || "auto";
  const hasContents = options.text || options.highlights || options.summary;

  try {
    const method = hasContents ? "searchAndContents" : "search";
    const results = hasContents
      ? await exa.searchAndContents(query, options)
      : await exa.search(query, options);

    const duration = performance.now() - start;

    emitMetric("exa.search.duration_ms", duration, { type, method });
    emitMetric("exa.search.result_count", results.results.length, { type });
    emitMetric("exa.search.success", 1, { type });

    return results;
  } catch (err: any) {
    const duration = performance.now() - start;
    const status = String(err.status || "unknown");

    emitMetric("exa.search.duration_ms", duration, { type, status });
    emitMetric("exa.search.error", 1, { type, status });

    throw err;
  }
}