chat_perplexity: Chat with a model hosted on perplexity.ai

In ellmer: Chat with Large Language Models

Chat with a model hosted on perplexity.ai

Description

Sign up at https://www.perplexity.ai.

Perplexity AI is a platform for running LLMs that are capable of searching the web in real-time to help them answer questions with information that may not have been available when the model was trained.

This function is a Uses OpenAI compatible API via chat_openai_compatible() with the defaults tweaked for Perplexity AI.

Usage

chat_perplexity(
  system_prompt = NULL,
  base_url = "https://api.perplexity.ai/",
  api_key = NULL,
  credentials = NULL,
  model = NULL,
  params = NULL,
  api_args = list(),
  echo = NULL,
  api_headers = character()
)

Arguments

system_prompt	A system prompt to set the behavior of the assistant.
base_url	The base URL to the API endpoint.
api_key	Use credentials instead.
credentials	Override the default credentials. You generally should not need this argument; instead set the PERPLEXITY_API_KEY environment variable. The best place to set this is in .Renviron, which you can easily edit by calling usethis::edit_r_environ(). If you do need additional control, this argument takes a zero-argument function that returns either a string (the API key), or a named list (added as additional headers to every request).
model	The model to use for the chat (defaults to "sonar"). We regularly update the default, so we strongly recommend explicitly specifying a model for anything other than casual use.
params	Common model parameters, usually created by params().
api_args	Named list of arbitrary extra arguments appended to the body of every chat API call. Combined with the body object generated by ellmer with modifyList().
echo	One of the following options: none: don't emit any output (default when running in a function). output: echo text and tool-calling output as it streams in (default when running at the console). all: echo all input and output. Note this only affects the chat() method.
api_headers	Named character vector of arbitrary extra headers appended to every chat API call.

Value

A Chat object.

See Also

Other chatbots: chat_anthropic(), chat_aws_bedrock(), chat_azure_openai(), chat_cloudflare(), chat_databricks(), chat_deepseek(), chat_github(), chat_google_gemini(), chat_groq(), chat_huggingface(), chat_lmstudio(), chat_mistral(), chat_ollama(), chat_openai(), chat_openai_compatible(), chat_openrouter(), chat_portkey(), chat_posit()

Examples

## Not run: 
chat <- chat_perplexity()
chat$chat("Tell me three jokes about statisticians")

## End(Not run)

ellmer documentation built on July 14, 2026, 1:07 a.m.