Perplexity launches Portable Computer local-first agent system
The runtime is available to Perplexity Pro and Max subscribers using NVIDIA DGX Spark hardware.
- Runs a post-trained PPLX 27B model alongside Qwen 3.8 27B, with planned support for NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning.
- Uses CLI tools instead of MCP servers, on-demand skill loading, self-verification, and an always-on local sandbox.
- Scores 85.4% on knowledge work tasks, 66.7% on BrowseComp web tasks, and 65.1% on ParseBench-100 document parsing.
- Keeps documents local with built-in PII flagging and requires user approval before routing tasks to frontier cloud models.
- Escalating to frontier models for text guidance raises Terminal Bench 2.1 scores from 59.6% to 73.0% at $0.415 per rollout.
Developers and DGX Spark owners handling sensitive documents can run agentic workflows on-premises without sending raw files to third-party cloud models.
