Perplexity LLM integration guide

Overview

Perplexity provides access to their Sonar models, which are based on Llama 3.1 but fine-tuned for search, through their inference API. These models are multilingual and text-only, making them suitable for a variety of agent applications.

Usage

Install the OpenAI plugin to add Perplexity support:

pip install "livekit-agents[openai]~=1.0"

Set the following environment variable in your .env file:

PERPLEXITY_API_KEY=<your-perplexity-api-key>

Create a Perplexity LLM using the with_perplexity method:

from livekit.plugins import openai

session = AgentSession(
    llm=openai.LLM.with_perplexity(
        model="llama-3.1-sonar-small-128k-chat",
        temperature=0.7
    ),
    # ... tts, stt, vad, turn_detection, etc.
)

Parameters

This section describes some of the available parameters. For a complete reference of all available parameters, see the method reference.

modelstr | PerplexityChatModelsOptionalDefault: llama-3.1-sonar-small-128k-chat

Model to use for inference. To learn more, see supported models.

temperaturefloatOptionalDefault: 1.0

Controls the randomness of the model's output. Higher values (e.g., 0.8) make the output more random, while lower values (e.g., 0.2) make it more focused and deterministic.

Valid values are between 0 and 2.

parallel_tool_callsboolOptional

Controls whether the model can make multiple tool calls in parallel. When enabled, the model can make multiple tool calls simultaneously, which can improve performance for complex tasks.

tool_choiceToolChoice | Literal['auto', 'required', 'none']OptionalDefault: auto

Controls how the model uses tools. Set to 'auto' to let the model decide, 'required' to force tool usage, or 'none' to disable tool usage.

Links

The following links provide more information about the Perplexity LLM integration.

Python package

The livekit-plugins-openai package on PyPI.

Plugin reference

Reference for the with_perplexity method of the OpenAI LLM plugin.

GitHub repo

View the source or contribute to the LiveKit OpenAI LLM plugin.

Perplexity docs

Perplexity API documentation.

Voice AI quickstart

Get started with LiveKit Agents and Perplexity.