Agent skill

perplexity-sdk-patterns

Apply production-ready Perplexity Sonar API patterns for TypeScript and Python. Use when implementing Perplexity integrations, refactoring SDK usage, or establishing team coding standards for search-augmented generation. Trigger with phrases like "perplexity SDK patterns", "perplexity best practices", "perplexity code patterns", "idiomatic perplexity", "perplexity wrapper".

Stars 1,803
Forks 241

Install this agent skill to your Project

npx add-skill https://github.com/jeremylongshore/claude-code-plugins-plus-skills/tree/main/plugins/saas-packs/perplexity-pack/skills/perplexity-sdk-patterns

SKILL.md

Perplexity SDK Patterns

Overview

Production-ready patterns for Perplexity Sonar API. Since Perplexity uses the OpenAI wire format, you build wrappers around the openai client library with Perplexity-specific response handling (citations, search results, related questions).

Prerequisites

  • openai package installed (npm install openai or pip install openai)
  • API key configured in PERPLEXITY_API_KEY
  • Understanding of OpenAI chat completions format

Instructions

Step 1: Typed Client Singleton (TypeScript)

typescript
// src/perplexity/client.ts
import OpenAI from "openai";

export interface PerplexityChatCompletion extends OpenAI.ChatCompletion {
  citations?: string[];
  search_results?: Array<{
    title: string;
    url: string;
    date?: string;
    snippet: string;
  }>;
  related_questions?: string[];
}

export interface PerplexityUsage extends OpenAI.CompletionUsage {
  citation_tokens?: number;
  num_search_queries?: number;
  reasoning_tokens?: number;
}

let instance: OpenAI | null = null;

export function getClient(): OpenAI {
  if (!instance) {
    if (!process.env.PERPLEXITY_API_KEY) {
      throw new Error("PERPLEXITY_API_KEY not set");
    }
    instance = new OpenAI({
      apiKey: process.env.PERPLEXITY_API_KEY,
      baseURL: "https://api.perplexity.ai",
    });
  }
  return instance;
}

Step 2: Search with Full Response Parsing

typescript
// src/perplexity/search.ts
import { getClient, PerplexityChatCompletion } from "./client";

export type SearchModel = "sonar" | "sonar-pro" | "sonar-reasoning-pro" | "sonar-deep-research";
export type RecencyFilter = "hour" | "day" | "week" | "month";

export interface SearchOptions {
  model?: SearchModel;
  systemPrompt?: string;
  maxTokens?: number;
  temperature?: number;
  searchRecencyFilter?: RecencyFilter;
  searchDomainFilter?: string[];   // max 20 domains
  returnRelatedQuestions?: boolean;
  returnImages?: boolean;
}

export interface SearchResult {
  answer: string;
  citations: string[];
  relatedQuestions: string[];
  usage: {
    promptTokens: number;
    completionTokens: number;
    totalTokens: number;
    citationTokens?: number;
    searchQueries?: number;
  };
  model: string;
}

export async function search(
  query: string,
  opts: SearchOptions = {}
): Promise<SearchResult> {
  const client = getClient();

  const response = (await client.chat.completions.create({
    model: opts.model || "sonar",
    messages: [
      ...(opts.systemPrompt
        ? [{ role: "system" as const, content: opts.systemPrompt }]
        : []),
      { role: "user" as const, content: query },
    ],
    max_tokens: opts.maxTokens,
    temperature: opts.temperature,
    ...(opts.searchRecencyFilter && { search_recency_filter: opts.searchRecencyFilter }),
    ...(opts.searchDomainFilter && { search_domain_filter: opts.searchDomainFilter }),
    ...(opts.returnRelatedQuestions && { return_related_questions: true }),
    ...(opts.returnImages && { return_images: true }),
  } as any)) as unknown as PerplexityChatCompletion;

  return {
    answer: response.choices[0].message.content || "",
    citations: response.citations || [],
    relatedQuestions: response.related_questions || [],
    usage: {
      promptTokens: response.usage?.prompt_tokens || 0,
      completionTokens: response.usage?.completion_tokens || 0,
      totalTokens: response.usage?.total_tokens || 0,
      citationTokens: (response.usage as any)?.citation_tokens,
      searchQueries: (response.usage as any)?.num_search_queries,
    },
    model: response.model,
  };
}

Step 3: Retry with Exponential Backoff

typescript
// src/perplexity/retry.ts
export async function withRetry<T>(
  operation: () => Promise<T>,
  opts = { maxRetries: 3, baseDelayMs: 1000, maxDelayMs: 30000 }
): Promise<T> {
  for (let attempt = 0; attempt <= opts.maxRetries; attempt++) {
    try {
      return await operation();
    } catch (err: any) {
      if (attempt === opts.maxRetries) throw err;

      const status = err.status || err.response?.status;
      // Only retry on rate limit (429), timeout (408), or server errors (5xx)
      if (status && status !== 429 && status !== 408 && status < 500) throw err;

      const delay = Math.min(
        opts.baseDelayMs * Math.pow(2, attempt) + Math.random() * 500,
        opts.maxDelayMs
      );
      await new Promise((r) => setTimeout(r, delay));
    }
  }
  throw new Error("Unreachable");
}

// Usage
const result = await withRetry(() =>
  search("latest AI developments", { model: "sonar-pro" })
);

Step 4: Python Patterns

python
# perplexity_client.py
import os, hashlib, json
from openai import OpenAI
from functools import lru_cache

@lru_cache(maxsize=1)
def get_client() -> OpenAI:
    return OpenAI(
        api_key=os.environ["PERPLEXITY_API_KEY"],
        base_url="https://api.perplexity.ai",
    )

def search(
    query: str,
    model: str = "sonar",
    system_prompt: str | None = None,
    max_tokens: int | None = None,
    search_recency_filter: str | None = None,
    search_domain_filter: list[str] | None = None,
) -> dict:
    client = get_client()
    messages = []
    if system_prompt:
        messages.append({"role": "system", "content": system_prompt})
    messages.append({"role": "user", "content": query})

    kwargs = {"model": model, "messages": messages}
    if max_tokens:
        kwargs["max_tokens"] = max_tokens
    if search_recency_filter:
        kwargs["search_recency_filter"] = search_recency_filter
    if search_domain_filter:
        kwargs["search_domain_filter"] = search_domain_filter

    response = client.chat.completions.create(**kwargs)
    raw = response.model_dump()

    return {
        "answer": response.choices[0].message.content,
        "citations": raw.get("citations", []),
        "usage": {
            "prompt_tokens": response.usage.prompt_tokens,
            "completion_tokens": response.usage.completion_tokens,
            "total_tokens": response.usage.total_tokens,
        },
        "model": response.model,
    }

Step 5: Citation Formatter

typescript
// src/perplexity/citations.ts
export function formatCitationsAsMarkdown(
  answer: string,
  citations: string[]
): string {
  // Replace [1], [2], etc. with markdown links
  let formatted = answer;
  citations.forEach((url, i) => {
    const marker = `[${i + 1}]`;
    formatted = formatted.replaceAll(marker, `[${i + 1}](${url})`);
  });
  return formatted;
}

export function formatCitationsAsFootnotes(
  answer: string,
  citations: string[]
): string {
  const footnotes = citations
    .map((url, i) => `[${i + 1}]: ${url}`)
    .join("\n");
  return `${answer}\n\n---\n${footnotes}`;
}

Error Handling

Pattern Use Case Benefit
Typed response wrapper All API calls Access citations without any casts
Retry with backoff Transient failures Handles 429 rate limits gracefully
Citation formatter User-facing output Converts [1] markers to clickable links
Python @lru_cache Client reuse Single client instance across calls

Output

  • Type-safe Perplexity client with full response typing
  • Search function with all Perplexity-specific parameters
  • Automatic retry with exponential backoff and jitter
  • Citation formatting utilities

Resources

Next Steps

Apply patterns in perplexity-core-workflow-a for real-world usage.

Expand your agent's capabilities with these related and highly-rated skills.

Didn't find tool you were looking for?

Be as detailed as possible for better results