Reverse Engineering Perplexity AI APIs
Discover, document, and implement undocumented Perplexity AI endpoints for pplx-sdk.
When to use
Use this skill when:
- Discovering new API endpoints from perplexity.ai browser traffic
- Decoding request/response payloads from captured cURL commands
- Mapping SSE event types from streaming endpoints
- Extracting auth flows (cookies, tokens, session management)
- Adding new endpoint support to the SDK
Instructions
Step 1: Capture Traffic
DevTools (F12) → Network → XHR/Fetch
1. Perform action on perplexity.ai
2. Right-click request → Copy as cURL
3. Paste cURL for analysisStep 2: Decode Payload
Extract from the captured request:
- URL path (e.g.,
/rest/sse/perplexity.ask) - Method (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE)
- Auth (Bearer token from cookie
pplx.session-id) - Request body (JSON payload with field names and types)
- Response format (JSON, SSE stream, etc.)
Step 3: Document Schema
For each field in the payload:
- Name, type, required/optional, default value
- What it controls (e.g.,
mode: "concise"= shorter answers) - Discovered values (e.g.,
model_preference= "pplx-70b-chat" | "pplx-70b-deep")
Step 4: Map to SDK Architecture
| Discovery | Target | Action |
|---|---|---|
| New endpoint | transport/ | Add endpoint constant and method |
| Request fields | domain/models.py | Create Pydantic request model |
| Response fields | domain/models.py | Create Pydantic response model |
| SSE events | transport/sse.py | Add event type to parser |
| Auth variation | shared/auth.py | Add extraction method |
| Error codes | core/exceptions.py | Map to exception type |
Step 5: Implement
Create the SDK implementation following the layered architecture:
- Model in
domain/models.py - Service in
domain/<service>.py - Tests in
tests/test_<service>.py
Known API Surface
Implemented
POST /rest/sse/perplexity.ask— Main query endpoint (SSE streaming)
Discovered (not yet implemented)
- Thread management (
/rest/threads/) - Collections (
/rest/collections/) - User profile (
/rest/user/) - File upload (
/rest/upload) - Sharing (
/rest/share/)
Anti-Detection Notes
- Use realistic
User-Agentheaders matching Chrome/Safari - Include
Referer: https://www.perplexity.ai/andOriginheaders - Consider TLS fingerprinting via curl_cffi with
impersonate="chrome120" - Rate limit requests to avoid detection