The most expensive ($0) coffee chat of my life: A Comet story 🌍

EDITOR’S NOTE

Hello Nanobits Readers,

Last week, I found myself staring at 12 YouTube tabs (along with many others), each containing a "must-watch" podcast I had wanted to see. You know how it goes: you open them with the best intentions, then a month later you are closing tabs you never actually watched.

I was venting about this to a friend over coffee when he mentioned, "You know, I have been using Comet for exactly this problem. It can watch the videos for you and tell you the important bits." My entire AI Linkedin feed had been gushing about it for weeks, but I was just hesitant if I really needed another AI tool?

I gave it a shot and here's what struck me: Comet isn't trying to replace ChatGPT or Claude. It's bringing AI to where you already spend 8+ hours a day - your browser. No more copy pasting between tabs, no more context switching, no more explaining to an AI what you're looking at.

So I decided to play with it for one week and used Comet exclusively for my everyday browsing on personal laptop: LinkedIn scrolling, email management, WhatsApp conversations, YouTube procrastination. And this week, I'm sharing those every day experiments with you, which you can pick up easily as well.

PERPLEXITY'S COMET BROWSER

Comet is Perplexity's ambitious attempt to build what they call an "AI-native" browser, essentially a Chromium-based browser where AI isn't just an add on feature but the core interaction paradigm. Released in July 2025, it promises to transform browsing from a solitary activity into a collaborative experience with AI.

At its heart, Comet features an AI assistant that can see and understand any webpage you are viewing. Unlike traditional browsers where you would need to copy text to ask an AI about it, Comet's assistant has direct visual access to your current tab. You can highlight text, point at images, or reference entire pages, and the AI immediately understands the context.

The browser comes with built in ad-blocking, privacy modes, and what Perplexity calls "agentic capabilities", meaning the AI can actually perform actions on websites, not just answer questions about them. It can fill forms, click buttons, navigate between pages, and even complete multi-step workflows across different sites.

What sets Comet apart from competitors like Arc is its deep integration with Perplexity's search engine, giving it access to real-time web information while maintaining the context of your current browsing session. It's built on Chromium, so all your favorite Chrome extensions still work, but with an AI layer that turns passive browsing into active assistance.

MY EXPERIMENTS WITH COMET BROWSER

I spent a week testing Comet with the everyday tools I live in: Gmail, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, YouTube, Amazon, and Eventbrite (this was a go-to this week, not an every day platform). Instead of grand AI experiments, I focused on mundane tasks: email triage, research, responding to messages, video summaries, and shopping comparisons. Here's what happened when I brought AI to my daily digital routine...

LinkedIn: Social Intelligence in Action

I decided to test Comet's research capabilities by asking it to investigate Arvind Srinivas' recent posts about Comet Browser: "Go to Arvind Srinivas' profile and check what he's posted about Perplexity Comet in the last 10 days."

Comet systematically navigated to his profile, expanded his recent posts, and analyzed multiple Comet-related updates including discussions about phishing email protection, Comet Plus features, early adopter feedback, and the Invisible team acquisition to scale Comet infrastructure. It even dove into comment threads to capture community reactions and concerns.

Within minutes, I had a comprehensive summary of the CEO's own perspective on Comet's development and user reception: research that would have taken me significant manual scrolling and note-taking to compile.

Gmail: Email Intelligence Made Simple

With my inbox cluttered with newsletters I never seem to read, I decided to test Comet's email analysis capabilities. I asked: "Check the latest 3 unread newsletters from Finshots and give me a summary of what they shared."

Comet immediately identified the three most recent Finshots newsletters in my inbox and dove into their content. It provided precise summaries of each email. The AI captured not just headlines but key insights and implications that would have taken me 20+ minutes to read through manually.

What impressed me most was the accuracy – Comet didn't just skim subject lines but actually processed the full newsletter content, extracting actionable insights I could reference in conversations later that day.

WhatsApp: AI-Powered Messaging

I decided to test Comet's ability to actually compose and send messages. I asked it: "Go to Baby Coco group and type a cute message about how much I adore Coco and he is a bundle of joy. And write a short poem describing my love for my dog."

Comet navigated directly to the Baby Coco group chat, composed a heartfelt message about my adorable pup, and then crafted and sent a short poem expressing my love for my dog. The AI handled the entire process autonomously – from finding the right chat to typing and sending both messages without any manual intervention.

What struck me was how naturally it understood the casual, affectionate tone appropriate for a pet-focused group chat. This wasn't just text analysis anymore; Comet was actively participating in my digital conversations.

YouTube: Video Intelligence

I opened a 2h52m VC podcast featuring Nikhil Kamath and others discussing venture capital trends in Silicon Valley. Given the lack of time to watch the entire episode, I asked Comet: "What are the top 5 ideas that were discussed in this podcast?"

Comet (seems to have) analyzed the video transcript and delivered five comprehensive takeaways: AI making traditional industries investable, declining birth rates and societal shifts, the rise of wellness and longevity sectors, the attention economy's impact on branding, and energy/EV infrastructure as mega-trends. Each point included specific examples and nuanced insights that captured the depth of the ~3h discussion.

What usually takes dedicated hours of active watching became a 2-minute targeted learning session for me, with the AI extracting not just surface-level topics but the underlying strategic implications discussed by the panel.

Amazon: Smart Shopping Queries

I wanted to test Comet's product research capabilities with a specific request while being on the Amazon’s website (I wasn’t logged in): "Find me the best scented candles under $8, which have a rating of more than 4.5."

Comet systematically searched Amazon, applied the necessary filters for ratings and price, and clicked through individual product pages to gather detailed information. It returned a comprehensive table of 10+ qualifying candles, complete with exact prices, ratings, and descriptions of each scent profile.

It didn't just find products; it analyzed scent categories (tropical, fruity, floral, spice) and provided context about each candle's use cases. What would have taken me 30+ minutes of manual browsing and comparison became an instant, organized shopping guide.

Eventbrite: Location Based Event Discovery

I tested Comet's event research capabilities with a simple request: "Search for the events happening on Labor Day in Seattle and tell me the price for them."

Comet navigated Eventbrite's search function, filtered for Labor Day events in Seattle, and systematically clicked through individual event pages to gather pricing information. It identified several events including a Seattle Labor Day Rooftop BBQ and The BADSHAH Party with DJ Prashant 🙃, providing specific ticket prices and event details for each.

It even discovered the "Today" filter on Eventbrite to find current events, demonstrating how it can learn and adapt to website interfaces in real-time. What would normally require multiple searches and manual price checking became an organized event guide with pricing in minutes.

THE BIGGER PICTURE: THE BROWSER WAR

Comet represents a fundamental shift in how we think about browsers. We're moving from browsers as passive windows to the internet to browsers as active collaborators in our digital work.

This isn't just about convenience, it's about cognitive offloading. Every time Comet summarizes a long article, compares products, or extracts key points from a video, it's freeing up mental resources for higher level thinking. The browser becomes an extension of your working memory.

The implications are profound. Imagine every knowledge worker having an AI assistant that maintains perfect context of everything they're reading, watching, and writing. Research that takes hours could collapse into minutes. Decision making could be informed by instant synthesis of vast amounts of information.

This shift represents the natural evolution of how we interact with browsers – from passive consumption to active collaboration. We are witnessing the emergence of what could be called the "AI browser wars." The battle is no longer just about speed; it's about AI integration, user privacy, and resource efficiency, with Edge having stronger AI integration with Copilot features while Chrome's Gemini AI remains limited to paid subscribers. Opera has launched both Browser Operator and Opera Neon as "agentic browsers," while companies like The Browser Company are racing to redefine browsing entirely.

The stakes are enormous. Browsers are the gateway to digital life, and whoever controls the AI-powered browsing experience will shape how billions of people interact with information. We're moving toward a future where your choice of browser determines not just what you can access, but how intelligently you can process and act on that information. The question isn't whether AI will transform browsing, it's which company will win the race to become your digital brain.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY

The Good: Users on Reddit are raving about the productivity gains. "It's like having a research assistant who never sleeps," one user posted. The AI's ability to maintain context across tabs is genuinely game changing. The Chrome extension compatibility means you don't lose your existing workflow. Many users report saving 2-3 hours daily on research and administrative tasks.

The Bad: Users complain it's "way too cluttered and clunky for a browser" with some returning to Chrome within days. The AI sometimes misinterprets context, especially with complex layouts or dynamic content. Battery drain is noticeable on laptops – expect 20-30% more consumption than regular Chrome.

The Ugly: Security researchers have discovered a critical vulnerability: the browser "can be prompt-injected by any website", meaning malicious websites could potentially hijack the AI to perform unwanted actions. "It's alarmingly easy for bad actors to trick a browser AI into following malicious instructions embedded in publicly available content" according to recent reports. Privacy advocates worry about an AI that can see everything you browse. Some users report the AI agent going rogue, attempting to fill forms or click buttons without explicit permission.

END NOTE

I haven't touched on Comet's keyboard shortcuts, the voice command features, or the advanced workflow automation capabilities. There's also an entire system for creating custom agents that I'm still exploring. So consider this your introduction to what might be the future of browsing.

What I can tell you is this: after a week with Comet, going back to regular Chrome feels like switching from a smartphone to a flip phone. Yes, it's rough around the edges. Yes, there are security concerns. But there's something undeniably powerful about a browser that actually understands what you're looking at.

The question isn't whether AI browsers will become mainstream, it's whether we're ready for our browsers to be this smart. In a world where your browser can see everything you see, understand everything you read, and act on your behalf, the line between augmentation and automation gets blurrier every day.

Until then, browse wisely (or let your AI do it for you).