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Personal research agent

Ask a question, get a sourced brief with links, in your terminal.

Starter prompt

Research: <question>. Search with Exa, read the 5-10 best primary sources with Firecrawl, and write research/<slug>.md with: a 5-bullet summary, key numbers with the source next to each, points where sources disagree, and a list of links. Mark anything you couldn't confirm as unverified.

Config

.mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "exa": { "type": "http", "url": "https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp" },
    "firecrawl-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "firecrawl-mcp"],
      "env": { "FIRECRAWL_API_KEY": "fc-YOUR_API_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

Setup steps

  1. Add both MCP servers.
  2. Run the prompt with one concrete question.
  3. Save good outputs as templates for recurring research.

Why this works

Search and page reading are separate tools, so the agent can find sources and then read them in full instead of trusting snippets.

Watch out

Never paste API keys into chat. Keep them in the config or environment.

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