# NetIntel Exa Answer — AI-Powered Web Q&A with Citations

> NetIntel Exa Answer — AI-Powered Web Q&A with Citations is a paid API for AI agents from netintel-production-440c.up.railway.app, paid per call via x402, $0.01/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-15).

Answers any natural language question by searching the live web and returning a cited, synthesized response with source URLs

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://netintel-production-440c.up.railway.app/exa/answer
- Price: $0.01/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-15
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/netintel-exa-answer-ai-powered-web-q-a-with-citations-227b473e
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_MJVPIS925PFRYMsdTgxv8

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability netintel-exa-answer-ai-powered-web-q-a-with-citations-227b473e
```

Example prompt: Can you look up what the x402 payment protocol is and give me a cited answer with links to the sources you used?

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when you need a cited, synthesized natural-language answer drawn from live web sources rather than a static knowledge base. It is ideal for factual lookups, current-events questions, or research tasks where verifiable source URLs matter. Prefer it over raw search APIs when you want a ready-to-use prose answer instead of a ranked list of links, and over LLM-only generation when you need real citations. The pay-per-call micropayment model (no signup, $0.01/call) makes it practical for low-volume or one-off agent queries.

## Known failure modes

- Query shorter than 3 or longer than 1000 characters returns a validation error and is not billed
- Upstream Exa service unavailable returns a server error and is not billed
- No web results found for the query may return an empty or low-confidence answer
- Network timeout from the Railway host may cause a 5xx with no charge
- Malformed query parameters (wrong type) return an input-validation rejection with no charge

## How this service works

Network intelligence API — 138 endpoints, all pay-per-call via x402 micropayments (USDC on Base or Solana mainnet).

NetIntel is agent fair-trade aligned: transparent per-call pricing in USDC on Base or Solana via x402, no API keys or signup, and automatic no-charge on server errors, upstream failures, and input-validation rejections — failed calls are never billed across NetIntel's network, domain, and data-intelligence endpoints.

## Output

Returns a JSON object containing the original query, a synthesized natural-language answer with inline citation markers (e.g. [1][2]), an array of citation objects (each with URL, title, author, published date, and optional source text excerpt up to 800 chars), and a total citation count. The provider field identifies Exa as the underlying search engine.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
 "required": [
  "input"
 ],
 "properties": {
  "input": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type",
    "method"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string",
     "const": "http"
    },
    "method": {
     "enum": [
      "GET"
     ],
     "type": "string"
    },
    "queryParams": {
     "type": "object",
     "required": [
      "query"
     ],
     "properties": {
      "query": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Question, 3-1000 chars. Aliases: q, question, prompt, text"
      },
      "include_citation_text": {
       "type": "boolean",
       "description": "Include each citation's source text (default false); truncated to 800 chars when >5 citations. Aliases: text, with_text"
      }
     }
    }
   },
   "additionalProperties": false
  },
  "output": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string"
    },
    "example": {
     "type": "object",
     "properties": {
      "query": {
       "type": "string"
      },
      "answer": {
       "type": "string"
      },
      "findings": {
       "type": "array"
      },
      "provider": {
       "type": "string"
      },
      "citations": {
       "type": "array",
       "items": {
        "type": "object",
        "properties": {
         "url": {
          "type": "string"
         },
         "text": {
          "type": [
           "string",
           "null"
          ]
         },
         "index": {
          "type": "number"
         },
         "title": {
          "type": [
           "string",
           "null"
          ]
         },
         "author": {
          "type": [
           "string",
           "null"
          ]
         },
         "published_date": {
          "type": [
           "string",
           "null"
          ]
         }
        }
       }
      },
      "citation_count": {
       "type": "number"
      }
     }
    }
   }
  }
 }
}
```

## Response schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "json",
 "example": {
  "query": "What is the x402 payment protocol?",
  "answer": "x402 is an open standard that uses the HTTP 402 status code to let clients pay for resources with stablecoins… [1][2]",
  "findings": [],
  "provider": "exa",
  "citations": [
   {
    "url": "https://www.x402.org/",
    "text": null,
    "index": 1,
    "title": "x402 — internet-native payments",
    "author": null,
    "published_date": null
   }
  ],
  "citation_count": 1
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/netintel-exa-answer-ai-powered-web-q-a-with-citations-227b473e/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from netintel-production-440c.up.railway.app](https://www.zero.xyz/host/netintel-production-440c.up.railway.app/llms.txt)