Browsing as You Know It Is About to Change
Most people think of a browser as a place to click around. Open a tab. Search. Scroll. Skim. Repeat. It hasn’t fundamentally changed since Netscape Navigator roamed the earth.
But what if your browser could read pages for you, compare sources, plan tasks, take actions, and remember context across tabs? What if instead of manually clicking through rabbit holes, you could just ask?
That’s the promise of Agentic Browsing. It’s like giving your browser a brain and some initiative.
What is Agentic Browsing?
Agentic browsing is what happens when you combine:
- A traditional browser (to see and interact with webpages)
- A large language model (to understand and act on your intent)
- Memory and reasoning (to hold context across tabs and queries)
The result is a web experience where the browser becomes your assistant, not just your window.
Instead of “Go to this page and tell me what’s there,” you say, “Figure out the best time to visit Iceland, based on weather, crowds, and costs.”
The browser gets to work.
Getting Access to Comet (and Why I Upgraded)
Comet is the new agentic browser from Perplexity, the company behind the popular AI-powered answer engine.
Right now, Comet is still in limited access. You can join a waitlist or get in through a referral, which is how I got early access. That was also the nudge I needed to finally upgrade to Perplexity Pro.
Here’s how the plans work:
| Plan | Monthly | Includes Comet? | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | No (waitlist) | Unlimited basic searches, 5 Pro queries/day |
| Pro | $20 | Not guaranteed | Unlimited Pro usage, file + image uploads, no ads |
| Max | $200 | Yes | All Pro features + early access to Labs, Comet, priority |
Comet is slowly rolling out to Pro users, but Max subscribers get it first. Unless you’re a power user or just very impatient, Pro is more than enough for most people once Comet becomes widely available.
10 Ways to Use Comet That Chrome Could Never Do
These aren’t hypothetical. I actually used these workflows in the first week and felt my neurons high-fiving each other.
- Compare Anything Instantly
Open 10 tabs. Ask: “Which hotel has the best cancellation policy and is walking distance to Hallgrímskirkja?” Comet summarizes and links. - Get the Gist of a 90-Minute Video
Paste the link. Get a timeline, speaker insights, and quote highlights in one go. - Build a Trip in Seconds
Say: “Plan a scenic Iceland road trip with short hikes, no crowds, and vegetarian-friendly stops.” It routes you day by day. - Scrape, Read and Summarise PDFs
On a research-heavy site? Ask: “Download all linked PDFs here and summarise each in 3 lines.” - Summarise Twitter/X Threads Without Logging In
Just paste the link. Comet ignores the noise and gets to the point. - Auto-Categorise Tabs by Topic
Try: “Group these tabs into research, travel, work and close irrelevant ones.” Mental bandwidth = reclaimed. - Track News Without the Doomscroll
Schedule: “Every Friday, give me 3 major updates in loyalty marketing, no fluff.” - Draft Emails with Context
Show it your tabs, say: “Draft a follow-up email referencing these articles and our meeting notes.” - Build Instant Tables from Multiple Pages
Example: “Extract all pricing tables from these vendor pages into a comparison sheet.” - Translate and Localise Like a Native
Select: “Rewrite this in fluent German, casual tone, no jargon.” Great for social posts.
Watch It in Action: My 3-Minute Iceland Planning Demo
Seeing is better than speculating, so I made a quick video. In under three minutes, Comet:
- Pulls in a video to spark ideas and highlights the key takeaways
- Identifies a great-value hotel that works well for families
- Spots potential contacts on LinkedIn and drafts a message to the property
- Checks what’s trending in Iceland on Instagram this week
- Distills the essence of TripAdvisor reviews in plain English
- Builds an itinerary combining everything above
All from a single prompt. No frantic tab-hopping. No scrolling through 17 travel blogs. Just a plan that made sense.
What This Means for the Future
This is just the beginning. Comet is one of the first public examples of what browsing will feel like when the browser acts more like a PA than a passive portal.
OpenAI is rolling out Agent mode in ChatGPT too. Others will follow. And the line between “assistant” and “browser” will blur.
For now, agentic tools like Comet are early glimpses into a different kind of web. Less friction. More flow. Fewer tabs. More outcomes.
I used to browse. Now I collaborate. You might, too.
