perplexity-mcp MCP server

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that provides web search functionality using Perplexity AI's API. Works with the Anthropic Claude desktop client.

Example

Let's you use prompts like, "Search the web to find out what's new at Anthropic in the past week."

Glama Scores

Components

Prompts

The server provides a single prompt:

perplexity_search_web: Search the web using Perplexity AI
- Required "query" argument for the search query
- Optional "recency" argument to filter results by time period:
  - 'day': last 24 hours
  - 'week': last 7 days
  - 'month': last 30 days (default)
  - 'year': last 365 days
- Uses Perplexity's API to perform web searches

Tools

The server implements one tool:

perplexity_search_web: Search the web using Perplexity AI
- Takes "query" as a required string argument
- Optional "recency" parameter to filter results (day/week/month/year)
- Returns search results from Perplexity's API

Installation

Requires UV (Fast Python package and project manager)

If uv isn't installed.

# Using Homebrew on macOS 
brew install uv

# On macOS and Linux.
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

# On Windows.
powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"

Next, install the MCP server

# Install from PyPi
uv pip install perplexity-mcp

# Install from source
uv pip install git+https://github.com/jsonallen/perplexity-mcp.git

Environment Variables

The following environment variable is required in your claude_desktop_config.json. You can obtain an API key from Perplexity

PERPLEXITY_API_KEY: Your Perplexity AI API key

Claude Desktop

Add this tool as a mcp server by editing the Claude config file.

On MacOS: ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json On Windows: %APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

  "perplexity-mcp": {
    "env": {
      "PERPLEXITY_API_KEY": "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"
    },
    "command": "uv",
    "args": [
      "run",
      "perplexity-mcp"
    ]
  }

To verify the server is working. Open the Claude client and use a prompt like "search the web for news about openai in the past week". You should see an alert box open to confirm tool usage. Click "Allow for this chat".