Posts tagged "mcp"

2 posts
Five open books on a wooden table in a sunlit library, each sending a coloured ray of light up into a glass orb, which combines them into a single white beam.

perplexity-agent-mcp: an open-source MCP server for Perplexity’s Agent API

| In AI
| 7 minute read

I regularly use the Perplexity API, whether from the command line or by letting Claude use it through an MCP, as a second search engine for its research. That’s why I paid attention when, about a week ago, an email from Perplexity landed in my inbox with the subject line “Your Sonar workload runs better on Agent API.” The pitch: their newer Agent API beats the classic Sonar models I’d been using, on both quality and cost.

Their own benchmarks put the cheapest Agent preset at roughly twice the accuracy of Sonar for about the same money, with the deeper presets reaching a level Sonar can’t touch (79.67% vs. 29.10% on BrowseComp for the high preset against Sonar Deep Research, at about 27% higher cost per query).

Marketing numbers, of course, but the direction made sense, and Perplexity is clearly steering everyone from Sonar to the Agent API (though they did also say Sonar isn’t going away).

I wanted to try it out and switch to the better, more efficient engine. It sounded easy, only it wasn’t.

In a Marvel comic-style recreation of the nucleological center from *The Fifth Element*, a futuristic command hub features glowing orange controls and blue monitoring stations. A man in a blue suit with a red tie grimaces as a woman leans in to whisper to him, with a speech bubble reading ‘You have 19 more meetings after this one.’ Behind them, several crew members in blue uniforms work at stations, while a large illuminated circular portal or control interface dominates the center wall with its warm orange glow. The scene captures the iconic sci-fi aesthetic of the original setting, reimagined in bold comic book art style.

Welcome Claude, my Chief of Staff

| In AI
| 28 minute read

Most people use AI like a search engine with extra steps. Ask a question, get an answer, move on. I did too, until I accidentally stumbled into something completely different.

Over the week, I’ve turned Claude into my personal Chief of Staff. What’s a Chief of Staff, you might ask? Think of these people who follow executives around, whispering important things into their ear, and making sure nothing falls through the cracks.

If you’ve watched The Fifth Element (go watch it, if you haven’t, it’s a great movie!), you know the scene: the president’s aide leans in and whispers something absurdly specific like “You have 19 more meetings after this one.” That’s essentially what Claude does for me now. Except I’m not a president. And thankfully, I have less meetings. I’m a freelance consultant living near a forest in Bavaria.

This post is a bit of a recap: how it happened, what the system actually looks like, three lessons I learned along the way, and, at the end, an unedited interview where I asked Claude seven questions about what it’s like to be my Chief of Staff, with some interesting insights. Don’t miss it!