Web Research with Perplexity

Default: Call Perplexity MCP directly. Only spawn agent when codebase context is explicitly needed.

Best For

• Technology comparisons (X vs Y)
• Best practices, industry standards
• OWASP, security guidelines
• Documentation references
• Stable technical content

Default Mode: Direct MCP Call

Use this for 90% of research requests. When user says "ask Perplexity", "research", "look up", etc.:

mcp__perplexity-ask__perplexity_ask({
  "messages": [{ "role": "user", "content": "Your research question" }]
})

This is fast, reliable, and what users expect.

Deep Mode: Agent (Rare)

Only use when user explicitly asks to compare research with their current code.

Trigger phrases that warrant agent:

• "compare my code to best practices"
• "is my implementation following standards"
• "research and show how my code differs"

Task(subagent_type="perplexity-researcher", prompt="Research: <topic>", run_in_background=true)

DO NOT use agent for:

• Simple "ask Perplexity about X" requests
• General research questions
• "What is the best way to do X" (unless they mention their code)

Query Formulation Tips

• Be specific: "Go 1.25 error handling best practices 2025"
• Include context: "Redis vs Memcached for session storage in Go services"
• Ask comparisons: "Pros and cons of gRPC vs REST for microservices"
• Include year: "Claude Code context optimization 2025"

Reference Following (Deep Research)

After Perplexity returns results with citations:

1. Review all cited URLs in the response
2. WebFetch top 2-3 most relevant sources for deeper context
3. Synthesize comprehensive answer combining all sources

# After Perplexity response with citations
WebFetch(url="<cited-url-1>", prompt="Extract key details about <topic>")
WebFetch(url="<cited-url-2>", prompt="Extract implementation examples")

Use reference following when:

• Initial answer is high-level and needs specifics
• User asks "tell me more" or "dig deeper"
• Implementing something that needs detailed guidance

Output Structure

## Summary

[Key findings - 2-3 sentences]

## Details

[Organized findings by topic]

## Recommendations

[Actionable items for the project]

## Sources

- [Source](url) - [what was learned]