Run Ongoing Category Research With Perplexity

1. Go to perplexity.ai and sign up or log in.
2. Look for Spaces in the left sidebar.

What you should see: A Spaces section, separate from your regular search history. A Space is a persistent workspace that remembers what you've asked before and applies custom instructions to every search inside it.

1. Click Spaces, then New Space.
2. Name it something specific and durable, your category plus "Research," so it still makes sense in three months.

What you should see: An empty Space with an option to add custom instructions.

1. Find the custom instructions field.
2. Describe your research goals (tracking competitor launches, pricing moves, and reviews in your category), your preferred source types (trade press, retailer sites, official brand announcements over forums when possible), and how you want answers formatted (short summary with dates and sources).

What you should see: Instructions saved and applied automatically to every question you ask inside this Space going forward.

1. Inside the Space, ask a specific question about your category.
2. Read the answer along with its cited sources, shown as numbered references you can click through to the original page.

What you should see: A direct answer with visible citations, not just a paragraph of unsourced claims. Troubleshooting: If an answer feels thin or generic, narrow the question. "What changed in the protein snack category this month" returns less than "Has [specific competitor] announced any new SKUs or price changes in the last 30 days."

1. Return to the same Space each week (or however often fits your monitoring cadence) with a fresh question.
2. Because the Space remembers prior findings, you can ask it to build on what it found last time rather than starting from scratch.

What you should see: A growing research history inside the Space that you can reference back to, instead of scattered one-off searches with no record.