Module 518 min read · Mastering Perplexity
Spaces & Collaboration
Spaces are Perplexity's answer to the question: how do you make AI research a team activity rather than an individual one? They're shared workspaces where multiple people can research together, with shared context, instructions, and a persistent library of sourced findings that anyone on the team can access and build on.
What Spaces are
A Space is a named, persistent workspace in Perplexity that you can configure with a custom system prompt and invite collaborators to join. Think of it as a shared Perplexity session with memory — research done by one team member in a Space is visible to all other members, and the Space's custom instructions apply to every search run within it.
Spaces are different from simply sharing a Perplexity link. A Space is a living workspace that accumulates research over time, where the context builds and the team's collective findings become a shared resource. This is the feature that makes Perplexity serious for professional teams rather than just individual researchers.
Setting up a Space that works
1
Name it by project or domain, not by team
A Space named "Q3 Competitive Analysis" is more useful than one named "Marketing Team." The name shapes how the Space gets used — specific names create focused research, generic names create sprawl.
2
Write a system prompt that focuses the research
The Space's system prompt runs behind every search in that Space. Use it to specify the research lens: "We are analyzing the electric vehicle market from the perspective of a potential battery materials supplier. Focus on supply chain, materials sourcing, and manufacturing partnerships." This shapes every answer toward your actual research need.
3
Establish naming conventions for saved searches
Agree with your team on how to title saved searches so the library stays organized. "[Topic] — [Date]" or "[Question] — [Researcher initials]" are simple conventions that make the accumulated research findable later.
4
Invite selectively
Spaces work best when everyone in them is actively contributing to the same research objective. Don't invite people who will only consume — the value comes from collective accumulation, not broadcast.
High-value Space use cases
📈 Competitive intelligence
A shared Space where the whole team contributes research on competitors — pricing changes, product launches, hiring signals, press coverage. Becomes a living competitive intelligence feed rather than a one-time document.
🎓 Academic research project
A study group or research team shares a Space with Academic focus mode as default. Each member researches their assigned subtopics, and the shared library becomes the team's sourced research base for a paper or project.
📰 Journalism and content research
A content team maintains a Space per editorial theme. Researchers surface and save relevant sourced findings; writers pull from the accumulated library. The Space becomes a collaborative research brief that grows over time.
💼 Due diligence
A deal team runs all research on a target company through a Space. Sourced findings on financials, market position, management team, and competitive landscape accumulate in one place that everyone on the deal can access.
Collections — personal organization
Separate from Spaces, Collections let you organize your own searches into named folders. Think of Collections as your personal research library — Spaces are for teams, Collections are for you.
Good Collection habits: create one Collection per ongoing project, save searches that produced particularly useful sourced answers, and revisit Collections when you return to a project rather than starting research from scratch.
The compounding value of Spaces
A Space's value increases with every search added to it. Day one, it's an empty workspace. Month one, it's a library of sourced findings on your research topic. Month three, it's a comprehensive, evolving knowledge base that new team members can get up to speed from instantly. The research compounds in a way that individual searches never do.
The single best thing you can do with Spaces today
Create one Space for the project or topic you research most often. Write a system prompt that defines the research lens. Start running your Perplexity searches there instead of in the default interface. Within two weeks you'll have accumulated more organized, sourced research on that topic than you'd have produced manually in months.