perplexity-mcp-server

MCP server for structured competitive/market-intelligence veille workflows on top of the Perplexity Sonar API.

Correction (2026-08-26): an earlier version of this README claimed no native Perplexity MCP connector existed anywhere. That was wrong — Perplexity publishes an official MCP server (github.com/perplexityai/modelcontextprotocol), including a Perplexity-hosted remote endpoint at https://api.perplexity.ai/mcp that's reachable from a cloud-scheduled session with zero self-hosting. If you just need generic ad hoc Sonar search, register that instead of building or running anything here.

What the official server doesn't give you is a structured, comparable weekly veille output: it exposes generic search/reasoning (Agent API, Search API), not a fixed-section company brief or a JSON-schema-constrained signal sweep. That's this server's actual reason to exist — it's a thin, narrow layer of two workflow tools, not a replacement for Perplexity's own MCP server.

Deploy this once (see "Remote deployment" below) with PERPLEXITY_API_KEY set as a platform secret, and any MCP client — including a cloud-scheduled Cowork/Claude session — can call it over HTTP without ever touching the local machine or a device bridge. Register it alongside Perplexity's official server, not instead of it.

Tools

• perplexity_company_news — structured company news brief (governance, executives, strategic events, financial situation, senior HR moves), fixed section headings, lookback_days instead of free-text date ranges. Output language is fr (default) or en via the language parameter — headings switch accordingly (e.g. Gouvernance/Governance, Dirigeants/Executives).
• perplexity_market_signals — sector-wide signal sweep (M&A, funding, appointments, restructurings) constrained to a JSON schema server-side, so the result is a real array of discrete signals, not markdown to re-parse. Returns an empty array (not an error) when nothing dated and reliable is found for the period — that's a meaningful result, not a failure.

Both tools support response_format: "markdown" | "json" and return citations/sources. For general-purpose search, use Perplexity's official MCP server instead — see the correction above.

Setup

npm install
cp .env.example .env   # then set PERPLEXITY_API_KEY
npm run build

Local use (stdio) — quick start, does NOT fix the cloud-scheduling problem

Good for testing, or for any workflow that already runs on your own machine. Register it in your MCP client's config (e.g. Claude Desktop's claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "perplexity": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/perplexity-mcp-server/dist/index.js"],
      "env": { "PERPLEXITY_API_KEY": "pplx-..." }
    }
  }
}

This still ties availability to that machine being on — it does not solve the original problem of a cloud-scheduled task needing the key. For that, use the HTTP deployment below.

Remote deployment (streamable HTTP) — the actual fix for cloud-scheduled tasks

Run the same code with TRANSPORT=http, on any Node-capable host (a small VPS, Render, Railway, Fly.io, a container on any cloud provider). The only requirements are: Node 18+, the ability to set an environment variable secret, and a public HTTPS URL.

PERPLEXITY_API_KEY=pplx-... TRANSPORT=http PORT=3000 npm start

The server exposes:

• POST /mcp — the MCP endpoint (streamable HTTP, stateless JSON — a fresh server+transport per request, so nothing leaks between calls and it scales horizontally without shared state)
• GET /health — plain liveness check for your hosting platform's health probe

Once deployed behind HTTPS (https://your-host/mcp), register that URL as a remote MCP connector in the workspace so the Perplexity-dependent scheduled task can reach it directly, with the key living server-side — the same operational model Pappers already uses (native connector, no local secret in the credential path).

What has been verified in this build

• npm run build compiles cleanly (strict TypeScript, no any).
• Both transports start without crashing (stdio and HTTP).
• GET /health responds correctly.
• Full MCP handshake (initialize, tools/list) returns both tools with correct JSON schemas, descriptions, and annotations.
• tools/call with an invalid API key returns a clean, actionable isError: true result (401 guidance pointing at the Perplexity dashboard) — the server does not crash and stays responsive afterward.

What has NOT been verified yet

No real PERPLEXITY_API_KEY was available in the build environment, so an actual successful Sonar call — real answer content, real citations, the market_signals JSON-schema-constrained response actually parsing as valid JSON — has not been exercised end-to-end. Before relying on this in the production veille routine, run each of the two tools once with a real key (locally via stdio is enough for this check) and confirm the output matches the shapes documented above.

Cost note

perplexity_company_news and perplexity_market_signals both default to the sonar-pro model (deeper search, more sources, higher cost per call than sonar) because the veille use case prioritizes completeness and citation quality over latency/cost — this is the deliberate default for both of this server's tools, confirmed 2026-08-26. There is no perplexity_search tool here to opt into a cheaper model for one-off queries; use Perplexity's official MCP server for that (see the correction at the top of this file). Review Perplexity's current per-model pricing before running this at the weekly-routine scale across dozens of companies — a full run enriches on the order of 50-90 companies plus one market-signals sweep, so the marginal cost of sonar-pro vs sonar compounds quickly.