Perplexity

The Perplexity provider offers access to Sonar API - a language model that uniquely combines real-time web search with natural language processing. Each response is grounded in current web data and includes detailed citations, making it ideal for research, fact-checking, and obtaining up-to-date information.

API keys can be obtained from the Perplexity Platform.

Setup

The Perplexity provider is available in the PerplexityProvider module. Add it to your Swift package:

dependencies: [
    .package(url: "https://github.com/teunlao/swift-ai-sdk", from: "0.2.1")
],
targets: [
    .target(
        name: "YourTarget",
        dependencies: [
            .product(name: "SwiftAISDK", package: "swift-ai-sdk"),
            .product(name: "PerplexityProvider", package: "swift-ai-sdk")
        ]
    )
]

Provider Instance

You can import the default provider instance perplexity from PerplexityProvider:

import PerplexityProvider

// Use the global perplexity instance
let model = perplexity("sonar-pro")

For custom configuration, you can use createPerplexityProvider to create a provider instance with your settings:

import PerplexityProvider

let customPerplexity = createPerplexityProvider(
  settings: PerplexityProviderSettings(
    apiKey: ProcessInfo.processInfo.environment["PERPLEXITY_API_KEY"] ?? ""
  )
)

You can use the following optional settings to customize the Perplexity provider instance:

baseURL String

Use a different URL prefix for API calls. The default prefix is https://api.perplexity.ai.
apiKey String

API key that is being sent using the Authorization header. It defaults to the PERPLEXITY_API_KEY environment variable.
headers [String: String]

Custom headers to include in the requests.

Language Models

You can create Perplexity models using a provider instance:

import SwiftAISDK
import PerplexityProvider

let result = try await generateText(
  model: perplexity("sonar-pro"),
  prompt: "What are the latest developments in quantum computing?"
)
let text = result.text

Sources

Websites that have been used to generate the response are included in the sources property of the result:

import SwiftAISDK
import PerplexityProvider

let result = try await generateText(
  model: perplexity("sonar-pro"),
  prompt: "What are the latest developments in quantum computing?"
)

print(result.sources)

Provider Options & Metadata

The Perplexity provider includes additional metadata in the response through providerMetadata. Additional configuration options are available through providerOptions.

import SwiftAISDK
import PerplexityProvider

let result = try await generateText(
  model: perplexity("sonar-pro"),
  prompt: "What are the latest developments in quantum computing?",
  providerOptions: PerplexityLanguageModelOptions(
    returnImages: true  // Enable image responses (Tier-2 Perplexity users only)
  )
)

print(result.providerMetadata)
// Example output:
// PerplexityProviderMetadata(
//   usage: PerplexityUsage(citationTokens: 5286, numSearchQueries: 1),
//   images: [
//     PerplexityImage(
//       imageUrl: "https://example.com/image1.jpg",
//       originUrl: "https://elsewhere.com/page1",
//       height: 1280,
//       width: 720
//     )
//   ]
// )

The metadata includes:

usage: Object containing citationTokens and numSearchQueries metrics
images: Array of image URLs when returnImages is enabled (Tier-2 users only)

You can enable image responses by setting returnImages: true in the provider options. This feature is only available to Perplexity Tier-2 users and above.

Model Capabilities

Model	Image Input	Object Generation	Tool Usage	Tool Streaming
`sonar-deep-research`
`sonar-reasoning-pro`
`sonar-reasoning`
`sonar-pro`
`sonar`