// behind the scenes

What happens in those 30 seconds

You paste a brand. We read the live web with Exa, score how AI search sees it, and Gemini turns the signal into a playbook. Here is every step.

Brand

Resolve

Exa

Gemini

Report

You name a brand

Type a company name. We resolve it to the one canonical website, so the whole report is about the right brand.

exa.search (8) → gemini-3.1-flash-lite picks the official domain

Exa pulls the brand's own pages (homepage, pricing, features, docs) and finds its real rivals by similarity, not guesswork.

exa.getContents (pricing · features · docs · livecrawl) + exa.findSimilar

For each question a buyer would ask, we see who AI search surfaces. How often the brand shows up, and how high, becomes its GEO score.

exa.search (type: auto · 20 results) per buyer question → GEO 0–100

Then the real test: we ask the questions and read the AI's answer. Does it actually cite the brand, or only the competitors?

exa.answer per question → is the brand in the citations?

Gemini compares everyone, finds the edge, and writes the playbook. It streams into a live deck that fills in as the report builds.

gemini-3.1-flash-lite (seed 7 · JSON) → NDJSON stream → live deck

// what it runs on

Exa

exa-js · Search (type: auto) · Find Similar · Contents (subpages, livecrawl) · Answer

Google Gemini

@google/genai · gemini-3.1-flash-lite · structured JSON · seed 7

Next.js · React

16 App Router · React 19 · NDJSON streaming

Vercel

Functions (Node · maxDuration 120) · security headers

Upstash Redis

per-IP rate limits · 6/min burst · 60/day

Google Cloud Storage

cached reports · daily spend budget

// notes for engineers

› The report streams as NDJSON: identity → visibility → strategy → playbook sections render as they finish, so the deck fills in live instead of waiting for the whole pipeline.
›Every Exa call is wrapped with retry + backoff, and untrusted page text is fenced in <UNTRUSTED_CONTENT> guards before it reaches Gemini.
› Reports are cached in Google Cloud Storage + Redis, and a daily spend budget caps cost.

architecture overview · no secrets shown · back to the scout