Perplexity has released Portable Computer, a local-first build of its agentic platform that runs the agent harness, orchestrator, planner, tool router, and post-trained models directly on NVIDIA DGX Spark hardware. This packaged system allows every task to begin on-device, carrying no per-token charge for work handled by local models, while escalating only specific steps to 15+ cloud models upon user approval.
- Users can select either Qwen 3.8 27B or PPLX 27B, with NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning coming soon.
- Code and tool calls execute in an OS-enforced sandbox that restricts processes, filesystem paths, and network access.
- On the 53-task Local Knowledge Work Bench, PPLX 27B scored 85.4%, outperforming Pi harness (77.6%) and Hermes (74.0%).
- Terminal Bench 2.1 results showed 59.6% locally, rising to 73.0% with adviser escalation at roughly $0.415 per rollout.
The system is designed for enterprises and industries requiring data residency or confidentiality, offering a way to handle repo-scale migrations and long verification loops economically on owned hardware.