The entire world is going crazy over AI agents these days. It all started with OpenClaw, an AI agent that performs various tasks based on your instructions, and is now growing into a phenomenon where every major company is trying to develop its own version of it. Next in line for presenting an AI argentic tool to the market is Perplexity, which announced its own entry called Personal Computer at today’s Ask 2026 developer conference.
Personal Computer is the company"s second AI assistant, after Perplexity Computer, that runs on a user-supplied Mac mini and can help users with actions like doing research, writing emails, preparing morning briefs, etc. You just tell it what you want it to do, and it does it. Users can choose to power the agent with one of the latest frontier models, including Claude, Gemini, or Grok, and can even deploy multiple models to communicate with each other.
Perplexity claims Personal Computer is more secure than agents like OpenClaw because every sensitive action requires your explicit confirmation. The company also included a remote kill switch and full audit logs to prevent the agent from going rogue. This is encouraging news, since most of these platforms are notorious for being unsafe for users.
The platform operates as a hybrid system that keeps AI orchestration and reasoning in the cloud, but still has access to your local files. It connects a cloud-powered artificial intelligence directly to an always-on Mac mini running the local software client. This setup gives the agent direct access to your active desktop sessions and internal applications.
Announcing Personal Computer.
— Perplexity (@perplexity_ai) March 11, 2026
Personal Computer is an always on, local merge with Perplexity Computer that works for you 24/7.
It"s personal, secure, and works across your files, apps, and sessions through a continuously running Mac mini. pic.twitter.com/EpvilVX6XZ
Accessing the new platform requires joining a waitlist and maintaining a Perplexity Max subscription. That premium tier costs $200 per month and provides 10,000 monthly compute credits. This could be a legitimate alternative to running AI agents using your own API keys, because doing so can ramp up the cost of using an agent fast.
The initial rollout is strictly limited to Mac hardware. The company also confirmed an upcoming enterprise version that will introduce single sign-on capabilities along with additional compliance controls for enterprise computers.