exa vs Open Scholar Skills
exa is a plugin bundle for AI coding tools published by exa-labs. Marketplaces we read that list it: 4 (Claude Code: claude-plugins-official, Official MCP Registry, Docker MCP Catalog, Claude: knowledge-work-plugins). Open Scholar Skills is a plugin bundle for AI coding tools published by ZhangYGroup (Yongjun Zhang). Marketplaces we read that list it: 1 (Community GitHub marketplaces). As of our marketplace pass on 2026-10-28. This pair was picked by a reader, not by our comparison rule, so search engines are asked not to index the page.
Where each is published
| Marketplace |  exa | |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Code: claude-plugins-official | Listed Version: 3.4.1 Forks (GitHub): 404 Stars (GitHub): 5 190 Not marked · First seen |
Not listed |
| Official MCP Registry | Listed Version: 3.4.1 Forks (GitHub): 404 Stars (GitHub): 5 190 Not marked · First seen |
Not listed |
| Docker MCP Catalog | Listed Version: sha256:d88edd571d98 Forks (GitHub): 404 Pulls (Docker Hub): 37 131 Stars (Docker Hub): 7 Stars (GitHub): 5 190 Not marked · First seen |
Not listed |
| Claude: knowledge-work-plugins | Listed Version: 3.4.1 Forks (GitHub): 404 Stars (GitHub): 5 190 Not marked · First seen |
Not listed |
| Community marketplace joshzyj/open-scholar-skill | Not listed | Listed Version: 5.22.2 Forks (GitHub): 25 Stars (GitHub): 178 Not marked · First seen |
Each figure is the marketplace's own and is never added up across marketplaces. A marketplace that publishes no figure shows none: no number is not zero.
The facts side by side
| Fact | exa | Open Scholar Skills |
|---|---|---|
| Marketplaces that list it (differs) | 4 (better) | 1 (worse) |
| Stars (GitHub) (differs) | 5 190 (better) | 178 (worse) |
| Pulls (Docker Hub) (differs) | 37 131 | No figure on Docker Hub |
| Forks (GitHub) (differs) | 404 (better) | 25 (worse) |
| Last release | Not published | Not published |
| Where it runs (differs) | Remote server or your machine | Installs as a plugin bundle |
| Transport (differs) | Streamable HTTP, stdio | Not stated |
| Tools it declares (differs) | 2 | Not published |
| Environment variables it asks for (differs) | 1, secrets among them: 1 | Not published |
| Parts of the bundle (differs) | 3 | Not published |
| Licence (differs) | MIT | Not stated |
| Repository (differs) | github.com/exa-labs/exa-mcp-server | github.com/joshzyj/open-scholar-skill |
| Changes in the last 7 days (differs) | 1 | 2 |
| First seen (differs) | 2026-10-11 | 2026-10-24 |
| Endpoint at the last check (differs) | Responded 5 days ago | no remote endpoint we check |
Lines where the two differ have a tinted background and bold values. Where the data itself says which value is better (more marketplaces, a larger figure of the same marketplace, a fresher release, a verified mark on a marketplace that lists both), the better one is also marked green with ▲ and the worse one red with ▼. Where it runs, the transport, the tools, the settings, hooks, the bundle's parts, the licence and the week's changes are marked only as different: more or fewer is not better in itself.
What each says it does
exa
Exa AI web search, deep research, and content extraction. Provides MCP tools and research skills for comprehensive web search, people discovery, company research, academic papers, and more.
Open Scholar Skills
The full social-science research pipeline as skills: idea formalization, systematic literature review, theory and hypotheses, research design with power analysis, causal identification, EDA, analysis with publication-quality tables and figures, computational social science, LLM annotation, section-by-section drafting, citation verification, journal formatting, ethics, replication packages, and simulated peer review. Ships specialized reviewer, code-review, and verification subagents, plus a PreToolUse data-safety guard.
How to run each
exa As a Claude Code plugin
/plugin install exa@claude-plugins-officialOpen Scholar Skills As a Claude Code plugin
/plugin marketplace add joshzyj/open-scholar-skill
/plugin install open-scholar-skill@open-scholarCommands built only from what the marketplaces declare; the full set for every client is on each card.
Only exa has a remote endpoint we check. How we check endpoints
Tools each declares
The marketplaces of Open Scholar Skills publish no list of tools, so we do not compare tools.
Settings each asks for
The marketplaces of Open Scholar Skills publish no settings it asks for, so we do not compare settings.
What it can do: exa · What it can do: Open Scholar Skills · Compare two other plugins
Data comes from the public marketplace file https://github.com/anthropics/claude-plugins-official/blob/HEAD/.claude-plugin/marketplace.json. Data comes from the Official MCP Registry (registry.modelcontextprotocol.io), CC0 1.0. Data comes from the Docker MCP Catalog (desktop.docker.com/mcp/catalog) and Docker Hub. Data comes from the public marketplace file https://github.com/anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins/blob/HEAD/.claude-plugin/marketplace.json. Data comes from public marketplace files in GitHub repositories of their authors. Figures come from our own regular passes over the marketplaces, last read on . We publish no contact details for plugin publishers.