perplexity-web-mcp

A skill for searching the web and asking Perplexity AI models through a command-line tool and MCP, a standard way for AI agents to call external tools.

In plain words
What is it for?
Web searches, quick questions, and explicitly requested deeper research through Perplexity, using the appropriate model and authentication flow.
Why use it?
It provides documented search and research commands while requiring login and quota checks so limited searches are not wasted.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/jacob-bd/perplexity-web-mcp/data
Any agent
npx skills add jacob-bd/perplexity-web-mcp --skill data
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jacob-bd/perplexity-web-mcp

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 131 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 5,785 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 100% copy Near-identical to another mod in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00131 $0.05785
Opus 5 $0.00066 $0.02892
Sonnet 5 $0.00026 $0.01157
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00579

Measured 3d ago against content hash 49515df0d237, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

perplexity-web-mcp scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 3d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to perplexity-web-mcp — 0 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

src/perplexity_web_mcp/data/SKILL.md · 542 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 542 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Perplexity Web MCP

Search the web and query premium AI models through Perplexity AI.

Quick Reference

Run pwm --ai for comprehensive AI-optimized documentation covering all commands, models, MCP tools, auth flows, and error recovery.

pwm --ai                # Full AI reference (RECOMMENDED first step)
pwm --help              # CLI help
pwm login --check       # Check auth status

Critical Rules

  1. Authenticate first: Run pwm login before any queries
  2. Tokens last ~30 days: Re-run pwm login on 403 errors
  3. Check quota before your first query every session (see protocol below)
  4. Default to quick/Sonar 2 — only escalate when the query genuinely needs Pro
  5. Never use Deep Research autonomously — only when the user explicitly asks

Quota-Aware Usage Protocol (MANDATORY)

Perplexity has hard quota limits. Wasting Pro queries on simple lookups exhausts the weekly pool fast, leaving nothing for questions that actually need it.

Cost Model

Tier What It Costs Resets Typical Pool
Sonar 2 / quick 1 Pro Search Weekly ~300/week
Pro Search (standard/detailed, pplx_ask, pplx_query, all model-specific tools) 1 Pro Search query Weekly ~300/week
Council (pplx_council, pwm council) N+1 Pro Searches (1 per model + 1 Sonar 2 synthesis) Weekly ~300/week (shared)
Deep Research (pplx_deep_research, research intent) 1 Deep Research query Monthly ~5-10/month

Read the full file on GitHub · 542 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 3d ago First seen · 542 lines · 131 tokens per session scan A 49515df0d237

Subscribe to this mod's changes

perplexity-web-mcp is a skill published in the GitHub repository jacob-bd/perplexity-web-mcp (180 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 131 tokens to every session and 5,785 once invoked, about $0.0007 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to perplexity-web-mcp, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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