perplexity-reliability-patterns

name	perplexity-reliability-patterns
description	Implement reliability patterns for Perplexity Sonar API: circuit breaker, model fallback, streaming timeout, and citation validation. Trigger with phrases like "perplexity reliability", "perplexity circuit breaker", "perplexity fallback", "perplexity resilience", "perplexity timeout".
allowed-tools	Read, Write, Edit
version	1.12.0
license	MIT
author	Jeremy Longshore <[e-mail]>
tags	["saas","perplexity","perplexity-reliability"]
compatibility	Designed for Claude Code, also compatible with Codex and OpenClaw

Perplexity Reliability Patterns

Overview

Production reliability patterns for Perplexity Sonar API. Perplexity performs live web searches per request, making response times inherently variable. The key reliability challenges: search can stall, citations can break, and model tiers have different availability.

Prerequisites

• Perplexity API key configured
• Cache layer (Redis or in-memory)
• Understanding of search latency variability

Instructions

Step 1: Model Tier Fallback

import OpenAI from "openai";

const perplexity = new OpenAI({
  apiKey: process.env.PERPLEXITY_API_KEY!,
  baseURL: "https://api.perplexity.ai",
});

async function resilientSearch(
  query: string,
  preferredModel: string = "sonar-pro"
) {
  const fallbackChain = [preferredModel, "sonar"];
  let lastError: Error | null = null;

  for (const model of fallbackChain) {
    try {
      const response = await perplexity.chat.completions.create({
        model,
        messages: [{ role: "user", content: query }],
        : model ===  ?  : ,
      });

       (model !== preferredModel) {
        .();
      }

       {
        : response.[].. || ,
        : (response  ). || [],
        : response.,
        : model !== preferredModel,
      };
    }  (: ) {
      lastError = err;
       (err. ===  || err. === )  err; 
      .();
    }
  }

   lastError ||  ();
}