Meet Perplexity Personal Computer: The Always-On Local AI Agent That Runs 24/7 on Your Mac mini

What if your computer could keep working long after you step away from your desk, and we are talking about not just saving a file or finishing a download, but actually thinking, reasoning, and completing complex multi-step tasks on your behalf? Well, that is possible now thanks to Perplexity AI's newly announced Personal Computer, a persistent AI agent that runs 24/7 on a dedicated, always-on Mac mini, merging the power of Perplexity's cloud-based AI infrastructure with the intimacy of your local files, apps, and workflows. It is the company's boldest product statement yet and might be a direct signal of where the AI agent race is heading.

From Cloud Agent to Local Machine

To understand Personal Computer, you need to understand what came before it. On February 25, 2026, Perplexity introduced Perplexity Computer, a cloud-based digital worker capable of autonomously executing complex, multi-step workflows across 19 AI models. Rather than issuing narrow instructions to a single AI, users can describe a high-level outcome. Perplexity Computer then breaks it down into tasks and subtasks, spins up specialized sub-agents, and drives the work forward, independently, for hours or even months.

Personal Computer is the evolution of that idea, where Perplexity Computer lives entirely in the cloud, Personal Computer anchors itself to your local machine and runs continuously on a user-provided Mac mini, connecting Perplexity's cloud AI directly with local files, applications, and active sessions.

What Personal Computer Actually Does

Personal Computer is software that can be installed on a user-provided Mac mini. It runs as a persistent background process, acting as a digital proxy that is always available, accessible, and controllable from any device, anywhere in the world.

Here is what defines its core capabilities:

• Always-On Operation: The AI agent never sleeps and can manage long-running pipelines, automate recurring tasks, and keep workflows moving continuously without requiring the user to be present.
• Local & Cloud Hybrid Architecture: The Mac mini handles local file access and app interactions, while all AI processing runs on Perplexity's secure cloud servers, keeping heavy computation off the local machine.
• Multi-Model Orchestration: Personal Computer inherits the full power of Perplexity Computer, which orchestrates across 19 AI models. The model-agnostic architecture allows model selections to be updated as newer models emerge.
• Comet Assistant Integration: Personal Computer works in tandem with Comet Assistant, Perplexity's AI-native browser companion, to allow seamless handoffs between web-based and local workflows.
• Remote Control from Any Device: Users can monitor, control, and adjust ongoing tasks from a phone, tablet, or any other connected device while the Mac mini runs in the background.

Security by Design

An always-on, locally-connected AI system raises legitimate security concerns, and Perplexity has built in several explicit guardrails:

• Every sensitive action requires explicit user approval before execution.
• A full audit trail logs every action taken within a session.
• A kill switch gives users immediate manual control to halt all activity at any time.

Perplexity positions this security posture as a direct differentiator from competing tools like OpenClaw, emphasizing that no action proceeds without user confirmation.

In Conclusion:

Personal Computer is currently Mac-only and available via a waitlist. Perplexity claims that in an internal study of over 16,000 queries, Perplexity Computer, the cloud predecessor, has saved teams $1.6 million in labor costs and completed the equivalent of 3.25 years of work in just four months.

An enterprise version adds compliance features, security controls, and single sign-on (SSO), indicating that Perplexity is targeting both power users and corporate teams simultaneously.

Perplexity has been explicit about moving focus toward users making high-stakes, high-value decisions, less about maximizing user count, more about depth of engagement. As one Perplexity executive noted at a pre-launch briefing, the company is targeting users making GDP-moving decisions.