Three companies shipped "AI agent on your desktop" in the same two weeks. That's not a coincidence.

Something interesting happened this month. March 11: Perplexity announced Personal Computer. An always-on Mac Mini running their AI agent 24/7, connected to your local files and apps. Cloud AI does the reasoning, local machine does the access. March 16: Meta launched Manus "My Computer." Same idea. Their agent on your Mac or Windows PC. Reads, edits local files. Launches apps. Multi-step tasks. $20/month. March 23: Anthropic shipped computer use and Dispatch for Claude. Screen control, to-desktop task handoff, 50+ service connectors, scheduled tasks. Three separate companies.