Perplexity Personal Computer runs local agents 24/7 on Mac mini

Perplexity is betting that always-on, locally-grounded AI agents are the missing piece cloud-only systems can't solve — but the $200/month price tag and Mac-only waitlist make this a niche play for now.

• –Unlike cloud sandbox agents, Personal Computer runs a persistent process on a local Mac mini, giving it direct access to files, apps, and sessions across Gmail, Slack, GitHub, and Notion
• –Security model requires explicit user approval for sensitive actions, with full audit trails and a kill switch — an implicit acknowledgment that autonomous agents still need human guardrails
• –The enterprise companion (Computer for Enterprise) launched the same day with SOC 2 compliance, SAML SSO, and native Snowflake/Salesforce/Databricks connectors, signaling Perplexity's true target is B2B
• –Developer community reception is skeptical: HN commenters called it a polished wrapper on existing agentic concepts, and the self-reported productivity claims ("3.25 years of work in 4 weeks") are widely seen as unverified
• –Mac-only at launch limits addressable market, but the M4 Mac mini is an increasingly popular local AI inference platform