perplexity-reliability-patterns

# 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 ```typescript 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 }], max_tokens: model === "sonar-pro" ? 2048 : 512, }); if (model !== preferredModel) { console.warn(`[Reliability] Fell back from ${preferredModel} to ${model}`); } return { answer: response.choices[0].message.content || "", citations: (response as any).citations || [], model: response.model, fallback: model !== preferredModel, }; } catch (err: any) { lastError = err; if (err.st...