Spaces: Your Collaborative Research Hub

The Problem Spaces Solve

If you use Perplexity regularly, your history quickly fills up with threads from different projects, clients, and topics. A thread you saved two weeks ago is hard to find. Threads from different projects sit in the same flat list. And if you are doing research for a team, there is no way to share an organised collection of threads without sending individual links.

Spaces solve all three problems. A Space is a shared folder for research threads — with a name, a purpose, custom instructions, and the ability to invite collaborators.

Creating a Space

Find the Spaces section in the left sidebar and click "New Space." Give it a name that reflects its purpose — a client name, a project title, a research topic. You can add a description and an icon.

Once a Space exists, any thread you save goes into it. You can also move existing threads into a Space from your history.

Custom Instructions: The Most Underused Feature

Every Space has a "Custom Instructions" field. Whatever you write there will be applied to every thread started inside that Space — silently, before your first message.

This is more powerful than it sounds. Consider what you can specify:

• Audience and purpose — "All answers in this Space are for a non-technical executive audience. Avoid jargon. Use clear, plain language."
• Format — "Always structure answers with a summary paragraph first, followed by bullet points. Never use tables."
• Language — "Respond in French."
• Scope — "This Space is for research about the European EV market. Focus on EU regulatory developments, manufacturer strategies, and charging infrastructure."
• Role — "Act as a sceptical analyst. Challenge assumptions and surface counterarguments alongside supporting evidence."

Once set, you never need to repeat these instructions. Every search inside that Space behaves accordingly.

Sharing and Collaboration

Spaces can be kept private (only you) or shared with collaborators. When you share a Space, invited members can view all threads in it, add new threads of their own, and see each other's work. This makes Spaces useful for teams doing shared research — a product team tracking competitor analysis, a research group collecting literature, a client services team building knowledge for a specific account.

When to Create a Space

Create a Space when you have a topic you will research repeatedly over time, when you want consistent output format across many queries, or when you are working with others and need a shared research home. For one-off questions, threads in your general history are fine. Spaces are for ongoing work.