Perplexity Computer adds event triggered automations

Perplexity replaced Scheduled Tasks in Perplexity Computer with Automations, which add event based triggers on top of timing and give agents memory of their own previous runs. Where a scheduled task starts from scratch each time, an automation knows what it did last time.

Triggers can come from Slack, Gmail, Outlook, Linear or GitHub events, or from a set schedule. Conditions narrow which events actually start a run, and the examples given are concrete: an email from a particular sender asking for a decision, or every Monday at 8 a.m. checking competitor pricing, comparing it against the previous week’s findings, and updating a comparison spreadsheet. Agents can also be assigned to flag missed updates and passed deadlines using the job’s own run history.

Each automation uses the files, app connectors and Projects that Computer already has access to, so connector permissions configured by an admin limit both the data reachable and the actions permitted. Setup runs either by describing the job in the omnibar or through the Automations surface, and users can review the instructions, status, run history and what triggered each run.

The billing detail is the part that changes the economics. Automations do not use credits while Computer is watching for a trigger. Credits are spent only when a run actually executes, which means an automation that fires twice a week is charged for two runs rather than for every hour it sat idle.

Two practical limits: which actions require human review has to be configured explicitly rather than inferred, and the feature is limited to Computer users. Existing Scheduled Tasks appear in the new surface with a per-task migration option.

(Original source: Perplexity)