jschuller/perplexity-mcp

Perplexity MCP Server

Search the web from Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or any MCP client using Perplexity AI — with fine-grained control over recency, citations, images, and model parameters.

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What This Does

This MCP server connects AI assistants to Perplexity AI’s search API. Ask questions in natural language and get grounded, cited answers from the live web — directly inside Claude or any MCP-compatible client.

One tool, full control: perplexity_search_web exposes the complete Perplexity API — recency filtering, model selection, temperature, top_k/top_p, and citation/image toggles.

Getting Started

1. Get a Perplexity API Key

Sign up at perplexity.ai and generate an API key from your account settings.

2. Install & Configure

Claude Code (Recommended)

claude mcp add perplexity -e PERPLEXITY_API_KEY=pplx-your-key-here -- npx -y @jschuller/perplexity-mcp

Replace pplx-your-key-here with your key. -e saves it in plain text in Claude Code’s user config file (~/.claude.json; local scope by default, see claude mcp add --help), so the server gets it however Claude Code is started. The key also lands in your shell history. Put the server name before -e, and keep the -- before npx.

To keep the key out of the config instead, leave out -e ... and export the key in the shell you start claude from (export PERPLEXITY_API_KEY=...); a key exported in another shell does not reach the server.

Claude Desktop

Add to your claude_desktop_config.json:

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

Config location:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json