What happened
Perplexity’s announcement describes Teammates as personal agents for ongoing jobs rather than one-off prompts. A user can assign work such as monitoring a competitor’s prices and launches, preparing a daily inbox summary with draft replies, or drafting support email responses against policies and order history. The examples include approval checkpoints: in the support workflow, the agent checks with the user before issuing a refund. Perplexity says Teammates plan work, run tasks in parallel, and follow through until results are ready for review. They use the user’s Computer tasks, skills, memory, and tools, and can collaborate with other teammates or message coworkers in Slack. The announcement says Teammates are available to Max subscribers on the web.
The changelog also says Computer can now run entirely on supported Apple-silicon Macs. In fully local mode, it can work with local files and Mac apps such as Notes and Mail, with the model, harness, and execution on-device; Perplexity says personal data is not sent to the cloud. The company lists offline task execution and local file analysis as uses. Users can instead select Hybrid mode, which splits work between the Mac and cloud. Fully local mode is available to Pro, Max, and Enterprise subscribers using Mac app version 26.42.0 or later. Perplexity recommends 36 GB of unified memory. The announcement also describes a refreshed onboarding flow for choosing Local or Hybrid mode.
Voice mode is updated for desktop web and the Mac app, for Pro and Max subscribers. Perplexity says the experience runs on OpenAI’s gpt-live-1. Its examples include navigating Projects, finding an asset, starting a Computer task to compare vendors, and checking connected Drive for a contract. The voice interface can navigate Perplexity, open assets, manage Projects, and start Computer tasks without leaving the conversation.
These are distinct capabilities with separate access conditions: web-based Teammates for Max subscribers, local Computer for Pro, Max, and Enterprise on a sufficiently capable Mac, and voice mode for Pro and Max on web or Mac. The changelog does not describe them as a single package with shared availability.
What the archive adds
New Runtime’s earlier coverage of Perplexity Teammates on 2026-11-06 described persistent work agents available to Max subscribers on the web. This is a new fact on a known story: the changelog now places Teammates alongside local Mac execution and voice controls, rather than announcing the original Teammates concept anew.
Trend signal
This update fits the shift toward systems that delegate work and return results for review, rather than treating each prompt as a discrete task. It is consistent with AI-native organizations moving toward review and orchestration, although a product feature alone does not establish organizational adoption. The local mode also makes the runtime boundary consequential, but the announcement does not provide enough detail to assess its security controls.
Why now
The changelog dates the announcement to November 6, 2026. It combines capabilities that give users new ways to assign and operate Computer work: ongoing delegated jobs, local execution, and voice input. Perplexity’s announcement does not explain why these updates arrived together or describe a broader rollout timetable.
Why it matters
For builders, the useful distinction is not simply “agent versus assistant,” but what work can continue without repeated prompting, where the work runs, and what approval remains with a person. Teammates are aimed at recurring workflows and can prepare results for review; that may reduce repeated task setup, but teams still need to decide which outputs require approval and how to handle failures. Local Computer offers a different operational choice: eligible subscribers can run supported work on a Mac without cloud orchestration, but the 36 GB recommendation and supported Apple-silicon requirement narrow the fit. Voice mode adds another way to invoke work, not evidence that the work itself is more reliable. Teams should evaluate each capability against its own access requirements, data policy, and review process.
Limits and uncertainty
Perplexity describes the capabilities and gives eligibility requirements, but the announcement does not quantify task success, time saved, or error rates for Teammates, local Computer, or voice mode. It does not establish which files or app actions are supported beyond the examples given, or whether every workflow behaves identically in Local and Hybrid modes. The claim that local execution avoids sending personal data to the cloud is Perplexity’s; it has not been independently checked here. The announcement also does not report how frequently agents need intervention or how Slack collaboration is governed in practice.
Reader takeaway
Perplexity is expanding Computer from task-by-task interaction toward ongoing delegation, while adding local execution and voice as separate operating choices. Check eligibility before planning a deployment: Teammates are for Max on the web, while fully local Computer requires a compatible Mac, version 26.42.0 or later, and 36 GB of recommended unified memory. Treat review and data-handling tests as part of the rollout, not as solved by the feature announcement.