perplexity-prod-checklist

# Perplexity Production Checklist ## Overview Complete checklist for deploying Perplexity Sonar API integrations to production. Perplexity-specific concerns: every API call performs a live web search (variable latency), citations link to third-party sites (must validate), and costs scale per-request plus per-token. ## Prerequisites - Staging environment tested - Production API key generated (separate from dev/staging) - Monitoring configured - Cost budget defined ## Production Readiness Checklist ### API Configuration - [ ] Production `PERPLEXITY_API_KEY` in secret manager (not env file) - [ ] Key starts with `pplx-` and has credits loaded - [ ] Separate API keys for dev/staging/prod - [ ] Base URL is `https://api.perplexity.ai` (not localhost/proxy) - [ ] Model selection configured: `sonar` for fast, `sonar-pro` for deep ### Code Quality - [ ] All search calls wrapped in retry with exponential backoff - [ ] Rate limiting implemented (50 RPM default) - [ ] Query sanitization strips PII before sending to Perplexity - [ ] Citations parsed from response (not extracted from text) - [ ] `max_tokens` set on all requests (prevents runaway costs) - [ ] Timeouts configured: 15s for sonar, 30s for sonar-pro - [ ] Error handling covers 401, 402, 429, 500+ status codes - [ ] No hardcoded API keys in source code ### Performance - [ ] Result caching implemented for repeated queries - [ ] Cache TTL appropriate: 30min for news, 4hrs for research, 24hrs for facts - [ ] Streaming enabled...