perplexity-search

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