Test

Status: NEEDS-DESKTOP

Perplexity Comet is a standalone AI browser desktop application. Download from perplexity.ai/comet. As of 2026, access is waitlist or limited release. There is no CLI, no pip package, no npm module, and no --version flag. Verification is performed manually after installing the app.

What is required

• Download the Comet installer from perplexity.ai/comet (waitlist access required as of 2026)
• Install and launch on macOS or Windows
• A Perplexity account for AI assistant features

Smoke test: verify installation

Command (macOS terminal):

ls /Applications/Comet.app

Expected success output:

/Applications/Comet.app

If the directory exists, Comet is installed. A non-zero exit with "No such file or directory" means installation did not complete.

Command (Windows PowerShell):

Test-Path "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\Comet\Comet.exe"

Expected success output:

True

False means the installer did not complete or Comet was installed to a non-default path.

Smoke test: verify the browser launches

1. Open Comet from Applications (macOS) or Start menu (Windows).
2. Expected: browser window opens, Perplexity logo appears in the address bar area, sign-in prompt or your account dashboard is displayed.
3. Open a new tab. The new-tab page should show the Perplexity search bar.

Smoke test: verify AI assistant responds

1. Navigate to https://www.perplexity.ai.
2. Open the Comet Assistant side panel (lightning bolt icon).
3. Type:

What is 2 + 2?

Expected success output: The assistant responds with "4" or an equivalent natural-language answer within a few seconds. A response confirms the assistant connection to Perplexity's backend is active.

Smoke test: verify on-page summarization

1. Navigate to any news article, e.g., https://techcrunch.com and open any article.
2. In the assistant panel, type:

Summarize this page in one sentence.

Expected success output: A one-sentence summary of the article appears in the side panel within 5 seconds. This confirms the browser's page-context reading capability is working.

What success looks like overall

Check	Pass condition
App file present	Comet.app or Comet.exe found at install path
Browser launches	Window opens without crash; Perplexity UI visible
New-tab page loads	Perplexity search bar appears on new tab
Assistant responds	Reply to "What is 2 + 2?" appears in side panel
On-page summarization	Page summary returned for an open article

All five checks passing confirms a working Comet installation with live AI connectivity.

Note on automated testing

Comet is built on Chromium and supports Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP). Advanced teams can attach Playwright or Puppeteer to a running Comet instance for automated page interaction, but this is not an officially supported workflow. The comet-agent extension layer runs RPC commands from Perplexity's backend and operates independently of external CDP sessions.

Classification

NEEDS-DESKTOP - desktop browser application. Waitlist or limited access as of 2026. No programmatic install path.