Perplexity Control

A comprehensive MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that provides full programmatic control over the Perplexity API platform. Unlike the official Perplexity MCP server (which only exposes search, ask, research, and reason), this server is a complete control plane.

Why this exists

The official Perplexity MCP server wraps only the Sonar chat endpoint and hides the underlying API. This server exposes every Perplexity API surface:

Capability	Official MCP	This server
Sonar chat completions	✅ (as ask)	✅ sonar_chat
Deep research	✅ (as research)	✅ sonar_chat + sonar_async_*
Agent API	❌	✅ agent_create
Raw web search	❌	✅ web_search
Async jobs	❌	✅ sonar_async_submit/get/list
Embeddings	❌	✅ embeddings_create
Contextualized embeddings	❌	✅ embeddings_contextualized
API key management	❌	✅ api_key_generate/revoke/rotate
Cost estimation	❌	✅ estimate_cost
Model catalog	❌	✅ list_models
Health check	❌	✅ health_check
HTTP transport	❌	✅ Streamable HTTP
Full parameter control	❌	✅ All API params exposed

---

Installation

git clone <repo>
cd perplexity-control-mcp
npm install
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env and set PERPLEXITY_API_KEY
npm run build

---

Configuration

Variable	Default	Description
PERPLEXITY_API_KEY	(required)	Your Perplexity API key
MCP_TRANSPORT	stdio	stdio or http
MCP_PORT	3001	HTTP port (only for http transport)

---

MCP Client Configuration

Claude Desktop

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "perplexity-control": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/perplexity-control-mcp/dist/index.js"],
      "env": {
        "PERPLEXITY_API_KEY": "pplx-your-key-here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Cursor

Add to ~/.cursor/mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "perplexity-control": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/perplexity-control-mcp/dist/index.js"],
      "env": {
        "PERPLEXITY_API_KEY": "pplx-your-key-here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Comet (HTTP transport)

Start the server in HTTP mode:

MCP_TRANSPORT=http MCP_PORT=3001 PERPLEXITY_API_KEY=pplx-... npm start

Then configure Comet to use http://localhost:3001/mcp.

npx (without cloning)

After publishing to npm:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "perplexity-control": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@garza-os/perplexity-control-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "PERPLEXITY_API_KEY": "pplx-your-key-here"
      }
    }
  }
}

---

All Tools

Agent API

agent_create

Create an agent response using the Perplexity Agent API (POST /v1/agent). Supports multi-step agentic reasoning with tool use.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
input	string | message[]	✅	User input (string or messages array)
model	string	*	Provider/model format, e.g. openai/gpt-5.4
models	string[]	*	Fallback model chain (max 5). Overrides model
preset	enum	*	fast-search, pro-search, deep-research, advanced-deep-research
instructions	string		System instructions
tools	array		web_search, fetch_url, or function tools
max_output_tokens	integer		Maximum response tokens
max_steps	integer (1-10)		Maximum agentic steps
reasoning	object		`{effort: "low"
response_format	object		Structured output: {type: "json_object"} etc
language_preference	string		ISO 639-1 code, e.g. "en"

*One of model, models, or preset is required.

---

Sonar API

sonar_chat

Chat completions with live web grounding (POST /v1/sonar).

Parameter	Type	Description
model	enum	sonar, sonar-pro, sonar-reasoning, sonar-reasoning-pro, sonar-deep-research
messages	message[]	Conversation messages with role and content
max_tokens	integer	Max response tokens
temperature	float (0-2)	Sampling temperature
top_p	float (0-1)	Nucleus sampling probability
search_domain_filter	string[]	Whitelist/blacklist domains (prefix - to exclude)
search_recency_filter	enum	day, week, month, year
return_images	boolean	Include image results
search_after_date_filter	string	ISO 8601 date
search_before_date_filter	string	ISO 8601 date
user_location	object	{country, city, region, timezone}
search_language_filter	string	BCP 47 language tag

sonar_async_submit

Submit an async deep research job (POST /v1/async/sonar). Same parameters as sonar_chat. Returns a request_id.

sonar_async_get

Poll an async job (GET /v1/async/sonar/{request_id}).

Parameter	Type	Description
request_id	string	ID from sonar_async_submit

sonar_async_list

List all async jobs (GET /v1/async/sonar). No parameters.

---

Search API

web_search

Raw web search returning full page content (POST /search).

Parameter	Type	Description
query	string | string[]	Query or up to 5 queries
max_results	integer (1-20)	Results per query (default 5)
max_tokens	integer (≤1M)	Total token budget
max_tokens_per_page	integer	Per-page token limit (default 4096)
search_domain_filter	string[] (≤20)	Domain include/exclude list
search_language_filter	string[] (≤10)	BCP 47 language filter
search_recency_filter	enum	day, week, month, year
search_after_date_filter	string	ISO 8601 date
search_before_date_filter	string	ISO 8601 date
last_updated_after_filter	string	ISO 8601 date
last_updated_before_filter	string	ISO 8601 date
country	string	ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code
search_mode	enum	academic or sec

---

Embeddings API

embeddings_create

Generate dense vector embeddings (POST /v1/embeddings).

Parameter	Type	Description
input	string | string[]	Text to embed
model	enum	pplx-embed-v1-0.6b, pplx-embed-v1-4b
dimensions	integer (128-2560)	Output vector dimensions
encoding_format	enum	base64_int8, base64_binary

embeddings_contextualized

Document-aware embeddings where each chunk's vector is influenced by surrounding context (POST /v1/contextualizedembeddings).

Parameter	Type	Description
input	string[][]	Array of documents, each being an array of chunks
model	enum	pplx-embed-context-v1-0.6b, pplx-embed-context-v1-4b
dimensions	integer (128-2560)	Output vector dimensions
encoding_format	enum	base64_int8, base64_binary

---

API Key Management

api_key_generate

Generate a new API key (POST /generate_auth_token).

Parameter	Type	Description
token_name	string	Optional label for the key

Returns: { auth_token, created_at_epoch_seconds, token_name }

api_key_revoke

Revoke an API key (POST /revoke_auth_token). Irreversible.

Parameter	Type	Description
auth_token	string	The key to revoke

api_key_rotate

Convenience: generates a new key, tests it, then revokes the current key.

Parameter	Type	Description
token_name	string	Optional label for the new key

Returns: { new_key, old_key_revoked, note } Save the new_key immediately and update PERPLEXITY_API_KEY in your environment.

---

Utility Tools

estimate_cost

Calculate estimated USD cost before sending a request.

Parameter	Type	Description
model	string	Model ID
input_tokens	integer	Input token count
output_tokens	integer	Output token count
tool_invocations	object	{web_search: N, fetch_url: N}

list_models

Returns the full model catalog with descriptions, context lengths, and pricing.

health_check

Verifies API connectivity and key validity. Makes a minimal test request and returns latency and rate limit information.

---

Architecture

perplexity-control-mcp/
├── src/
│   ├── index.ts              # Entry point — stdio or HTTP transport
│   ├── config/
│   │   └── index.ts          # Env var validation (Zod)
│   ├── services/
│   │   └── perplexity-client.ts  # Centralized HTTP client
│   └── tools/
│       ├── index.ts          # Tool registry + request routing
│       ├── agent-tools.ts    # agent_create
│       ├── sonar-tools.ts    # sonar_chat, sonar_async_*
│       ├── search-tools.ts   # web_search
│       ├── embeddings-tools.ts   # embeddings_create, embeddings_contextualized
│       ├── admin-tools.ts    # api_key_generate/revoke/rotate
│       └── utility-tools.ts  # estimate_cost, list_models, health_check
├── .env.example
├── package.json
└── tsconfig.json

Client features

• Automatic Authorization: Bearer token injection
• Structured error responses with HTTP status codes
• Rate limit header parsing (X-RateLimit-Remaining, X-RateLimit-Reset, X-RateLimit-Limit)
• Automatic cost calculation from response usage objects
• Request logging to stderr

Transport

• stdio (default): Pipe-based transport for local MCP clients
• http: Stateful Streamable HTTP transport with per-session server instances. Each session gets its own Server instance. Sessions are cleaned up on disconnect.

---

Development

# Watch mode
npm run dev

# Build
npm run build

# Run (stdio)
PERPLEXITY_API_KEY=pplx-... npm start

# Run (HTTP)
MCP_TRANSPORT=http PERPLEXITY_API_KEY=pplx-... npm start

---

License

MIT