Perplexity just shipped the thing every AI company has been circling for months: not a smarter chatbot, but a coworker that keeps working after you log off.

It's called Teammates. CEO Aravind Srinivas announced it on X on 5 November 2026, and the idea is simple enough to say in one sentence — you give an AI agent a role, standing instructions, goals and permissions, and it owns an ongoing piece of work. Not a single question. A job.

I've not used Teammates myself — it launched yesterday, and it's behind Perplexity's most expensive plan — so this is a source-checked breakdown, not a hands-on review. Here's what's real, what's promised, and what I'd actually do with it.

The shift: from answering to owning

Every chatbot you've used works the same way. You ask, it answers, the conversation ends. If the work continues tomorrow, you start over and re-explain everything.

A teammate is built the other way round.…