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Perplexity Expanded Computer Platform Capabilities

New Skills Marketplace and Side Chat features enable modular agent management and background task supervision.

Updated on Sept. 22, 2026 in Artificial Intelligence

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Perplexity has introduced a Skills Marketplace and Side Chat features for its computer platform, enabling modular agent management and simultaneous background task supervision. AI Illustration. Upload story photo >

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Perplexity has launched its Skills Marketplace and Side Chat features for the Computer platform, allowing users to install reusable capabilities and query tasks in parallel. These updates follow a recent series of infrastructure releases focused on hybrid and local-first execution.

Why it matters

By decoupling agent capabilities and allowing simultaneous task oversight, Perplexity is shifting its agent workflow toward more granular control. This modular approach enables enterprise teams to standardize automation tools while keeping sensitive analysis local to the user.

The system mandates a minimum of 24GB of unified memory for Mac-based Hybrid Compute and 24GB+ of VRAM for PCs running the Portable Computer agent harness. These hardware thresholds are required to support local task planning, orchestration, and tool routing.

The players

Perplexity

An AI research and product company focused on agentic platforms, search interfaces, and large language model deployment.

The details

The platform now utilizes a split-processing architecture where Hybrid Compute manages initial tasks in the cloud before delegating sensitive data steps to a local model running on Apple-silicon hardware. Portable Computer further supports this by executing the agent harness, planner, and tool router directly on local machines equipped with NVIDIA RTX GPUs. The new Side Chat feature integrates with these processes via specific command prompts like /ask or /side, enabling users to interact with active workflows without interrupting the primary task execution.

Timeline

  1. August 6, 2026: Computer for Builders was announced.

  2. August 25, 2026: Portable Computer was introduced.

  3. September 1, 2026: Hybrid Compute for Mac launched.

  4. September 17, 2026: Effort Mode was announced.

  5. September 21, 2026: Skills Marketplace and Side Chat features launched.

The Tech Race

Perplexity is positioning its Computer platform to compete with local-first automation frameworks that prioritize data privacy. This update follows the precedent set by Apple-silicon Mac architecture integration, further separating the firm from cloud-dependent agent models.

Users can now browse and install reusable skills, while enterprise teams gain the ability to manage and approve internal capabilities. To leverage Hybrid Compute, users must currently run macOS 15 on an Apple-silicon Mac with at least 24GB of unified memory.

The takeaway

Perplexity is prioritizing modular workflows that allow for secure, local processing of sensitive tasks. Users should monitor the future release of Effort Mode for their mobile devices to see how reasoning levels can be adjusted across different computing environments.

What happens next

Effort Mode for desktop and mobile applications is expected to arrive in a future update.

Further reading

For broader trends in agent-based computing, visit Artificial Intelligence.

Source note: This article includes information reported by Techgenyz.

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