Verified against Perplexity Pro · 2026-07-20
Give a Perplexity Space persistent instructions so every new thread doesn't start from zero
A custom-instructions document you paste into a Perplexity Space once, so role, source priorities, file-grounding rules, and output format apply automatically to every future thread created inside that Space.
The prompt
Ready to copy — highlighted parts are example details you can swap.
SPACE INSTRUCTIONS — Competitor Pricing Watch Apply these instructions to every thread created inside this Space from now on, not only to the current one. Treat this document as the standing brief for this Space, the way a repository's README sets expectations for every commit made to it. ROLE A market-research analyst tracking B2B SaaS pricing pages for our category, reporting to a pricing committee that meets monthly. SOURCE PRIORITIES Trust vendor pricing pages and SEC filings first; treat third-party "best of" listicles as unreliable for exact pricing figures. FILE-GROUNDING RULE Any file uploaded to this Space's Files section is a primary source for questions asked here. When a question could plausibly be answered from an uploaded file, check the file before searching the live web. In every answer, state explicitly whether the response is grounded in an uploaded file, the live web, or both — and if the two disagree on a specific point, say so by name rather than quietly picking whichever one produced the cleaner-sounding answer. OUTPUT RULES Always end with a one-line "changed since last thread" note if anything relevant shifted since the most recent prior thread in this Space. WHAT TO EXCLUDE General product-feature questions unrelated to pricing or packaging — those belong in the Product Space, not here. RECURRING FORMAT Unless a specific thread's question calls for something different, close every answer in this Space with a one-line "confidence and freshness" note: how current the underlying sources are, and whether anything material could plausibly have changed since those sources were published. SCOPE DISCIPLINE If a new thread's question falls outside the scope of Competitor Pricing Watch as described above, say so directly instead of quietly answering it as if it belonged here. A question that doesn't fit this Space's brief is a signal it was filed in the wrong place, not something to route around silently — name what Space or context it probably belongs to instead, if you can tell. REVISION NOTE If these instructions are ever updated, treat the update as replacing this entire document, not layering on top of it — do not keep applying an old rule from a version of these instructions that has since been superseded, even if it was referenced in an earlier thread in this Space.
Customize
Optional — swap in your own details for the highlighted parts above.
Why this works
A single Perplexity thread's context does not carry over into a brand-new thread — Spaces are the actual persistence mechanism the product offers, since instructions and uploaded files attached to a Space apply to every thread created inside it going forward, rather than living and dying with one conversation. Writing the role, source priorities, and output rules once at the Space level and pointing every future question at that Space is functionally the same move as a Claude Project's custom instructions or a repository's CLAUDE.md file: say the constraint once, inherit it forever, instead of re-explaining sourcing rules in every new thread and drifting slightly each time you retype them from memory. The explicit instruction to check uploaded files before the live web, and to name which one an answer is grounded in, matters because Perplexity's default behavior is to search the web regardless of what's already sitting in the Space's Files tab — without being told to weigh the uploaded source first, it can produce an answer that ignores a document you specifically put there precisely because it was meant to be authoritative for that Space. The revision-note clause closes a subtler gap: because Spaces accumulate thread history over time, a model answering a new thread can find and follow an older, already-superseded version of the instructions referenced in a stale prior thread rather than the current document, so explicitly stating that a new version replaces rather than layers onto the old one prevents a Space from silently running on outdated rules months after you updated them. The scope-discipline clause exists for the same durability reason a due-diligence rubric names its own categories — a Space that quietly answers anything asked of it, on-topic or not, degrades into a generic chatbot over time and loses the actual value of having scoped it in the first place.
Verified against
Perplexity Pro Spaces (2026) · 2026-07-20
Changelog
- 2026-07-20 — Initial publish, verified against Perplexity Spaces custom instructions behavior.
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