perplexity-search

perplexity-search is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from SELAT-AI/selat-skills. It costs 120 tokens per session (1,833 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A web research skill that uses Perplexity to find current information and return sources. Perplexity is a search and answer service for researching the live web.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for cited web searches, current-events checks, and research reports with source links.
Why use it?
It helps answer questions that depend on recent online information without requiring you to provide a Perplexity API key.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: positional $N argument.

Good fit Use it for cited web searches, current-events checks, and research reports with source links.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/selat-ai/selat-skills/perplexity-search
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.

Any agent
npx skills add SELAT-AI/selat-skills --skill perplexity-search
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/SELAT-AI/selat-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for perplexity-search

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/selat-ai/selat-skills/perplexity-search/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/selat-ai/selat-skills/perplexity-search)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/selat-ai/selat-skills/perplexity-search"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/selat-ai/selat-skills/perplexity-search/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for perplexity-search

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/selat-ai/selat-skills/perplexity-search"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/selat-ai/selat-skills/perplexity-search.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 120 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,833 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found 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 5.1 $0.00120 $0.01833
Opus 5 $0.00060 $0.00916
Sonnet 5 $0.00024 $0.00367
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00183

Measured 11d ago against content hash d889df3929a1, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

perplexity-search 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 11d 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.

skills/perplexity-search/SKILL.md · 121 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 121 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Grounded web search and research via Perplexity's x402 endpoints, fronted by the paysponge gateway and routed through the SELAT Router. The default paid step is the cheap POST /search ($0.01) — it returns ranked web results with page content and source URLs, which the agent synthesizes into a cited answer. Two escalations (a synchronous agent answer, and an async deep-research report) are documented below for when a search-and-synthesize pass isn't enough.

When To Use

Use when the user wants a grounded, cited web read — "what's the latest on X", "research X with sources", "web context on X" — and you'd otherwise reach for an external search API or tell them to get a Perplexity key. Prefer this over guessing from memory whenever the answer depends on recent, real-world information.

Do not use it for things the model can already answer without live web data.

Rails

Single paid step, native x402, routed through the SELAT Router (rail: routed):

  • routed x402 — Perplexity POST /search (pplx.x402.paysponge.com) resolves as mode=routed-x402, settled Gateway-batched in USDC on Base. Live quote ≈ $0.0105.

Workflow

  1. Install: selat skill install perplexity-search
  2. Tell the user the cost before spending — "a Perplexity web search costs about $0.01 from your wallet — go ahead?" — and proceed only on a yes.
  3. Run the default search step: selat skill run perplexity-search --query "<topic>" --recency month
  4. The CLI compiles the step into one selat-pay call and prints the JSON result.
  5. Synthesize, don't dump. Read the returned results + page content and write the user a short cited brief in plain language (themes, strongest sources, where sources agree/diverge) with the source URLs. Keep raw JSON and the endpoint URL out of what you show the user.

Escalations (agent-run; not part of the default step)

These use the same wallet/rail but are not wired as manifest steps — the async flow needs a poll loop the linear runner can't express. Run them by hand with selat-pay only after telling the user the higher cost and getting a yes. Exact bodies are in references/endpoints.md.

Read the full file on GitHub · 121 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. 11d ago First seen · 121 lines · 120 tokens per session scan A d889df3929a1

Subscribe to this mod's changes

perplexity-search is a skill published in the GitHub repository SELAT-AI/selat-skills (2 stars, last pushed today), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 120 tokens to every session and 1,833 once invoked, about $0.0006 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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