promptfoo/examples/perplexity.ai-example

Perplexity Example

This example demonstrates how to use Perplexity's search-augmented chat models to get up-to-date answers with scientific citations.

Features

• Real-time web search with academic citations
• Source filtering to trusted science domains (nature.com, science.org, newscientist.com)
• Time-based filtering for recent research (last month)
• Automatic follow-up question suggestions
• Consistent responses with temperature 0.2

Setup

1. Get your Perplexity API key from Perplexity Settings
2. Set up your environment:

export PERPLEXITY_API_KEY=your_api_key_here
export OPENAI_API_KEY=your_api_key_here  # For comparison model

Usage

Initialize and run the example:

promptfoo init --example perplexity.ai-example
promptfoo eval
promptfoo view

How It Works

This example compares scientific question-answering between:

• Perplexity sonar - Search-augmented model with real-time web access
• GPT-4o-mini - Traditional model without search capabilities

The example asks about recent scientific discoveries in:

• Dark matter
• Quantum computing

You'll see how Perplexity:

• Backs answers with academic citations
• Focuses on trusted scientific sources
• Provides recent research findings (within the last month)
• Suggests relevant follow-up questions