Automated Competitor and News Monitoring with Perplexity and n8n
Build a scheduled research workflow that checks fresh sources, structures the findings, and sends a reviewable digest to a team channel.
Step-by-Step Instructions
Define a narrow research question and source rules
Choose a topic, date window, and a small set of source requirements. Ask for primary announcements and direct URLs, and specify that missing evidence should be reported instead of guessed. Keep the output fields consistent so daily results are easy to compare.
"Summarize the top 3 open source AI announcements in the past 24 hours. Include links to the GitHub repository, license type, and key benchmark metrics."
Schedule a controlled workflow in n8n
In n8n, create a Schedule Trigger with the time zone and run frequency your team expects. Add a manual test path, a retry policy, and a duplicate check so a temporary provider error does not flood the destination channel.
Call the current Perplexity API model and validate the response
Use the model identifier and request format shown in Perplexity's current API documentation; do not copy an old model name from an example. Parse the response, validate that each finding has a working source URL and date, then send the draft digest to Slack or Discord for human review.
Official documentation & further reading
These first-party resources help verify product workflows, eligibility, privacy terms, and plan details. Providers can change features and limits, so check the current source before making a purchase or production decision.
