MCP Server
Retrieval & Memory
Perplexity MCP
1Perplexity 2Sonar 3web 4search 5for 6agents
the six Ws · specification
W1
Who
Maintained officially by Perplexity (ppl-ai).
W2
What
It lets an agent run web-grounded research queries through the Perplexity Sonar API.
W3
Where
It runs locally as a Node server that calls the Perplexity API.
W4
When
An agent reaches for it when it needs cited, up-to-date answers from live web search.
W5
Why
It brings Perplexity's search-augmented reasoning into agent workflows.
W6
With
Node.js and a Perplexity API key.
W7
Watch
Official vendor maintainer; the API key is read-oriented but metered and billed per query. All requests are outbound to Perplexity's API.
alternatives