[danscMax]

Rebased onto current main (3.8.49) and reduced to two commits. The original PR predates the perplexity-web rework, so the old diff is gone — please re-review, the substance changed.

1. mode: "search" is broken — it takes the whole catalog down

3.8.49 posts mode: "search" for every catalog model. Perplexity no longer treats that as Pro Search: it downgrades the turn to CONCISE, discards model_preference, and ends the stream with status: "FAILED" and the text "Error in processing query."

Captured against the live endpoint, paid account (subscription_tier: "max", payment_tier: "paid", pro_search_mode: "pro"), same cookie, same query, only mode differs:

// mode:"search" + claude50sonnet
{"text": "Error in processing query.", "mode": "CONCISE", "status": "FAILED",
 "_extras": {"pro_search_mode": "pro", "subscription_tier": "max", "payment_tier": "paid"}}

// mode:"copilot" + claude50sonnet   (same account, same second)
{"mode": "COPILOT", "display_model": "claude50sonnet", "user_selected_model": "claude50sonnet",
 "message_mode": "STREAMING", "status": "PENDING"}   // …then a normal answer stream

// mode:"search" + claude50opus
{"text": "Error in processing query.", "mode": "CONCISE", "status": "FAILED"}

// mode:"copilot" + claude50opus
{"mode": "COPILOT", "display_model": "claude50opus", "status": "PENDING"}   // …streams

pplx-auto and pplx-sonar were already on "copilot" and keep working, which makes this easy to miss in a smoke test — the two models most people try first are exactly the two that are fine, while Sonnet/Opus/Gemini/GLM/Kimi/Grok/GPT-5.6 all fail.

The executor's THINKING_MAP branch hardcoded "search" as well, so thinking variants failed the same way.

This PR moves every MODEL_MAP entry and the thinking branch to "copilot" and adds a guard test, so a future entry cannot reintroduce "search" unnoticed.

2. pplx-opus points at the previous Opus generation

claude48opus / claude48opusthinking are still accepted by the backend, so there is no error — the model just answers from the older generation while the dashboard advertises it as Opus. Perplexity's catalog exposes claude50opus; with mode:"copilot" it comes back as "display_model": "claude50opus" (see the capture above). Updated MODEL_MAP, THINKING_MAP and the catalog label (which read "Claude Opus 4.8").

3. The built-in-search hint is now opt-in

The sentence "You have built-in web search. Answer questions directly using search results." was appended to every system message. Perplexity's answer engine searches anyway, and for coding clients it leaks into replies as meta-commentary ("I need to search before responding per my instructions"). Now behind OMNIROUTE_PPLX_SEARCH_HINT (off by default, documented in .env.example and docs/reference/ENVIRONMENT.md). Happy to drop this commit if you would rather keep the old behaviour — items 1 and 2 stand on their own.

Tested

• tests/unit/perplexity-web.test.ts — 34/34, including three new cases (Opus mapping, the mode guard, the hint flag in both states).
• Live, through a running 3.8.49 build with this branch applied: pplx-auto, pplx-sonar, pplx-sonnet, pplx-opus all answer; server log shows pref=claude50opus, mode=copilot. Before the fix, the same build returned "Error in processing query." for pplx-sonnet and pplx-opus.

[danscMax]

Pushed a second, separately-scoped commit (c9d2eb2): pplx-opus was still pinned to the previous Claude generation while Perplexity's own model picker now offers Claude Opus 5.

Probed against a Max session — both identifiers are accepted and echoed back as display_model:

model_preference	display_model	response
claude50opus	claude50opus	219 KB
claude50opusthinking	claude50opusthinking	43 KB
claude48opus (previous)	claude48opus	44 KB
claude5opus	—	rejected

Updates MODEL_MAP, THINKING_MAP and the catalog label (the dashboard advertised "Claude Opus 4.8"). End-to-end through a running instance: perplexity-web/pplx-opus returns 200 with reasoning_content, in 4.7 s against 24 s on the previous generation.

Happy to split this into its own PR if you'd rather keep the mode fix isolated.

[diegosouzapw]

Heads-up: this PR is running against a stale base

release/v3.8.49 has moved 116 commits ahead of the base this PR was last built against, and several gate failures that were red on the older base have since been repaired on the branch itself:

Gate class	Repaired by
No new ESLint warnings (exit 2 — orphaned suppressions, not a lint violation)	#8706, #8831
Fast Quality Gates / check:file-size / Quality Ratchet	#8585, #8767, plus the post-merge-train re-pins
Docs Gates (fast-path) (missing Polish API_REFERENCE)	#8831
backoff-clamp + compressionDetailNormalizers unit tests	#8706

I verified this on a clean checkout of the current tip (3b515d90b3): lint:json --max-warnings 0, check:file-size, check:docs-sync, error-classification.test.ts (24/24) and check-db-rules.test.ts (22/22) all pass with no changes.

Currently failing here:

• Lint
• Quality Gates (Extended)
• Quality Ratchet
• dast-smoke

Please update the branch (the Update branch button, or rebase onto origin/release/v3.8.49) and let CI re-run. That should clear any failure caused by the stale base.

Note this is not a promise that every red disappears — a failure specific to the changes in this PR will survive the rebase, and Build (advisory) is advisory and does not block. Rebasing just removes the noise so what is left is actually yours.

No action was taken on this PR beyond this comment.

[diegosouzapw]

Re-homed to release/v3.8.50: v3.8.49 entered its release freeze, so the branch now belongs to the release captain and development continues on the next cycle. Nothing is wrong with this PR — it just needed a live base. No action needed from you; CI will re-run against the new base.

[diegosouzapw]

Thanks — great root-causing here, with live-endpoint evidence that made this easy to verify. Auditing against the current release tip:

1. mode: "search" downgrade — already fixed. open-sse/executors/perplexity-web/protocol.ts already posts "copilot" throughout MODEL_MAP/THINKING_MAP, matching item 1's description exactly (down to the same live-capture evidence pattern).
2. pplx-opus generation — already fixed. MODEL_MAP["pplx-opus"] already resolves to claude50opus, and the catalog label already reads "Claude Opus 5.0".
3. Search-hint opt-in — genuinely still missing. Extracted this one into a clean PR: fix(perplexity-web): make the built-in-search hint opt-in #10904 (merged, with Co-authored-by: dansc <dansc@yandex.ru>).

Given this branch was a month old and CONFLICTING against the current release, I extracted just the uncovered fix rather than trying to reconcile the whole diff. Closing as superseded by #10904 for the remaining value — full credit is there.