Wildcards in shortcuts

:rocket: Feature Request

In the Perplexity front end it would be great if you could support at least very basic wildcards in shortcuts - i.e. single word/phrase substitution.

Note: Apologies if this is not the right location to enter this request - it was where I was directed by Perplexity in response to my query on how to do this!

:magnifying_glass_tilted_left: Problem Statement

I have several shortcuts that expand in to long prompts but typically there is one (or several) words that I’d like to be able to replace on the fly. An example is doing research on companies - I’ve structured a set of information in a specific structure that I’d like to get, but the company is different each time I do the research.

:light_bulb: Proposed Solution

I’d like to be able to replace a placeholder tag with a parameter I enter at the time of executing the shortcut.

Imagined I’ve defined a shortcut “company_research” that resolves to the following:

“Provide a detailed overview of the company $1. Include the industry, the scope of their operations within that industry, available details regarding their tech stack…” [continues on for multiple lines]

To execute the shortcut:

“/company_research microsoft”

Which would then substitute in “microsoft” for the $1.

I’m using a $1 because I’m optimistic you could actually extend to support multiple parameters (similar to command line parameters).

:pushpin: API Impact

  • Which API component is affected? [e.g., chat completions, retrieval, search filters]
  • Is this related to a specific model? [e.g., Sonar Deep Research]
  • Would this require new API parameters or changes to existing ones?

:counterclockwise_arrows_button: Alternatives Considered

The workaround I do is run the shortcut, hit enter, stop the query from executing, manually edit the query, copy the full query, paste and execute. This is too many steps as a user, and I also expect it’s wasting compute power on the Perplexity side because I imagine the query does at least some level of execution before the “stop” is registered on the server side…

:paperclip: Additional Context

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