In partnership with
The Comet’s Tale ☄️ — Issue #6
Your Daily Beacon for All Things Comet, Perplexity, and AI Advantage
Join over 4 million Americans who start their day with 1440 – your daily digest for unbiased, fact-centric news. From politics to sports, we cover it all by analyzing over 100 sources. Our concise, 5-minute read lands in your inbox each morning at no cost. Experience news without the noise; let 1440 help you make up your own mind. Sign up now and invite your friends and family to be part of the informed.
Greetings, Astral Adventurers! Chris here. 👋🏼
If it feels like the tech universe is in acceleration mode, you’re right—and The Comet’s Tale ☄️ is right here to help you chart the course. With Perplexity’s Comet Browser and real-time research tools now redefining what’s possible, this newsletter is your daily/weekly warp jump into everything that matters in AI, automation, and web workflows.
Let’s kick off with the biggest unlock of the week: you’re no longer limited to reading about AI breakthroughs—you can build, research, and even execute code directly inside the browser. With Perplexity Spaces and Comet’s next-generation agentic interactions, the “Comet’s Crew” can now go from question to workflow in less time than ever. This issue, I’ll walk you through exactly how I leveraged Comet’s features to discover and implement CodeRabbitAI inside a live Gemini-flow build.
In case you missed it, you might be wondering what exactly Perplexity Comet is all about.
Simply put: Perplexity’s Comet is a browser with a built-in research assistant that….
Reads and understands web pages for you
Compares information across multiple sources
Fact-checks claims in real-time
Helps you shop smarter
Drafts emails, documents, and summaries
Answers follow-up questions about anything you're viewing
The key difference: While ChatGPT knows what it was trained on, Comet knows what's happening right now. Comet doesn't just search—it comprehends. Open any article, research paper, or terms of service, and ask "What should I actually care about here?" Instant, personalized summary.
Working on a project with 20 tabs open? Ask Comet to synthesize all of them into key findings. It's like having a research assistant who read everything while you were getting coffee.
Found something on Amazon? Ask: "Is this actually a good deal, and are the reviews legitimate?" Comet checks price history, analyzes review patterns, and finds alternatives you didn't know existed.
Upload any document—contracts, reports, bills—and ask questions in plain English. "What am I agreeing to?" "How can I lower this bill?" "What's the catch?" Highlight any text and ask Comet to respond, summarize, or rewrite it. Reply to emails professionally in seconds, not minutes.
🚀 Perplexity/Comet News of the Day
1. Perplexity Hits $20 Billion Valuation, $200M Funding Round
In September 2025, Perplexity closed a new $200 million raise at an eye-popping $20 billion valuation—doubling their worth in under six months. Their annual recurring revenue (ARR) is surging, reportedly nearing $200 million, and the funding marks over $1.5B raised since launch. Perplexity is now making headlines as a true challenger to Google Search, especially following their bold $34.5 billion bid for Chrome in August, and their direct push into browser-based AI.
2. Comet Browser: Early Access and Free Pro for PayPal/Venmo Users
Starting September, US users of PayPal and Venmo can skip the waitlist for Comet, Perplexity's flagship AI-native browser. The promo also gives them a free year of Perplexity Pro—paving the way for massive user growth. Comet touts tightly integrated AI, persistent contextual chat, cross-tab intelligence, and agentic features. For devs, Comet offers source-cited answers, instant code review, API docs search, and even bulk file analysis—this is real AI automation for both consumers and technical workflows.
3. Perplexity for Government
September saw the reveal of "Perplexity for Government," a dedicated initiative providing tailored AI search, research, and security to public sector teams. The system claims to auto-detect federal networks and apply relevant compliance controls—directly targeting large-scale institutional adoption.
4. Sonar and Free AI Model Push
"Sonar," Perplexity’s in-house model trained atop Meta’s Llama 3.3, is now the free-tier backbone. Boasting 128,000-token context, deep “dynamic depth” reasoning, and real-time web grounding, it offers capabilities previously paywalled elsewhere. September updates highlight Perplexity’s new open-source R1-1776, as well as planned rollouts of “Sovereign AI” models—optimized for both global and region-specific compliance (think: AI Act in the EU).
5. Legal and Copyright Spotlight
Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster have just filed high-profile lawsuits against Perplexity, alleging copyright violation in their “AI answer engine.” This litigation puts Perplexity at the heart of the growing legal battle over training data and output rights—key context if your audience tracks AI and IP issues.
🌬️ Comet’s Tailwinds
High-velocity prompt snippets for maximum daily gain
Welcome to your new toolkit. Every day, we’ll drop a few prompt snippets engineered for hands-on value. Whether you work in operations, marketing, engineering, or creative roles, one of these will pay immediate dividends.
1. Automated Business Process Audit & ROI Roadmap
Prompt: Perplexity Labs
“You are a business process optimization specialist and automation consultant. Analyze the uploaded business workflow documents (SOPs, process maps, etc.), identify key inefficiencies, recommend automation opportunities, and produce a phased implementation roadmap. Include projected ROI for each automation, tool recommendations, and an executive summary dashboard.”
Why it matters:
With one upload and prompt, users move from chaos to strategic clarity—Labs interprets real documents, scopes ROI, and outputs a custom, actionable playbook. This goes far beyond static AI chat.
2. Market Gap Hunter & Product Opportunity Generator
Prompt: Perplexity Labs
“Research the [your industry/market], analyze competitor offerings, customer reviews, and recent product launches—then identify up to three actionable market gaps or unmet needs. Create a mini-app dashboard that scores each opportunity by market size, urgency, and competitive defensibility. Suggest concrete product concepts or feature sets to address them.”
Why it matters:
Labs doesn’t just summarize trends—it constructs a competitive intelligence toolkit, generating prioritized, interactive opportunity maps your team can act on instantly.
3. Deep Data Analysis: Build an AI-Powered Visual Dashboard
Prompt: Perplexity Labs
“Using the provided dataset (CSV, Excel, or Google Sheet link), conduct advanced analytics to surface hidden trends, outliers, and correlations relevant to [project/business goal]. Then, generate an interactive dashboard with charts, recommended actions, and real-time data update capability. Include explanations in plain English for non-technical users.”
Why it matters:
A single prompt turns raw data into a living dashboard—critical for operators, marketers, or analysts who want results, not rows of data. Labs’ native ability to output visual, explorable dashboards is a differentiator.
These are atomic workflow unlocks—proven, real-world tasks that let anyone leverage Perplexity’s project-based AI for actual results, not just answers.
🌠 Project of the Day
In a previous issue, I shared how I use Perplexity Spaces for critical decision support in fantasy football. But my Week 1 lineup was a humbling reminder: even with elite tools, you’re prone to error if your assumptions (like VORP or volume projections) don’t evolve in real time.
When the dust settled after my first matchup, my supposed “optimal” roster got it wrong—most egregiously, benching Deebo Samuel in favor of Jerry Jeudy and Drake London. Perplexity’s Chimera agent broke down the loss with brutal honesty, highlighting both the misfires (like starting Jerome Ford at RB2) and the missed ceiling on my bench. The AI cited how systematic VORP recalibrations and scarcity cascades—driven by rookie emergences and last-minute injury news—demanded an immediate adjustment.
Here’s where the workflow shines:
Step 1: I prompted Chimera for a fully probabilistic, scenario-based review (“Tree of Thoughts” analysis). The agent ran n=100 simulations across several strategic paths (status quo, injury mitigation, upside maximization, etc.).
Step 2: Upside maximization (“Path C”) prevailed, with Chimera calculating Deebo Samuel’s VORP and tournament ceiling as CLEARLY superior to Jerry Jeudy—even with Deebo’s “QB uncertainty” baked in.
Step 3: The AI’s concrete advice: swap Samuel in, Superflex London, and lock in Warren at RB2—a full reversal from its own prior, more “consensus” guidance.
Step 4: Results: Deebo Samuel smashed his projection, delivering well above replacement value—exactly as the last-minute AI update predicted.
The lesson isn’t just about fantasy sports:
This is why live, interactive agentic reasoning beats static projections and fire-and-forget models. Sometimes, a single re-prompt—guided by an agent like Comet—can turn your week (or workflow) completely around.
🛸 Quick Hits, Cosmic Curios & Async AI Anomalies
Always on the lookout for what’s warping the fabric of social media—here’s your <60-second brief on the weirdest, wildest, and most actionable AI trends this week.
1. Viral AI Trendwatch
Studio Ghibli Makeovers 2.0: Now trending—Claude 3’s latest image model lets you turn profile pics (or pets) into intricate Ghibli-style illustrations. Try it yourself and tag your results #CometGhibli to get featured.
Fantasy Football Bot Banter: X/Twitter’s going wild with “AI coaches” trash-talking real opponents using custom GPTs. Want in? Fire up your own Comet Space, copy/paste your matchup, and generate some premium shade for your league group chat.
2. Social Media Curios
Midjourney’s ‘Cursed Objects’ Prompt: From “corporate logo as Renaissance sculpture” to “fast food mascot as dystopian cyborg,” this week’s viral prompt is a bizarre delight. DM us your favorite weird image result and we’ll highlight the coolest in the next issue.
Async AI Games: Discord servers are buzzing with “AI Dungeon Crawl” challenges—turn your everyday Slack banter into a live story-driven RPG run by bots. The best story twist submitted this week wins an AI-generated meme shoutout.
3. How to Get Involved
Jump on a trend:
– Use Perplexity Spaces to synthesize “what’s hot,”
– Remix viral prompts in your own style,
– Or just collect your favorites and let The Comet Assistant automate a roundup for your socials/newsletters.
4. Cosmic Anomaly of the Week
Last week, AI researchers made headlines for getting Llama-3 to “roleplay” as a cat that only responds in kaomojis—a viral showcase of agentic absurdity. Use Perplexity to ask about it!
Send us your AI finds, challenge The Comet for the weirdest cross-platform prompt, and ride the wave of what’s next—before the trend-watchers even notice.
💬 Q&A from the Cosmos
Each day, I’ll answer a hand-picked reader’s question.
Today:
Q: I want to seriously improve my prompt engineering skills in Perplexity. How should I structure my prompts, and what attachments or templates can I use to make my Spaces actively help me (or even ask me clarifying questions) about my task and model?
- Carla
A: Fantastic question Carla—better prompt engineering is the single highest-leverage upgrade for anyone using Perplexity Spaces, whether you’re aiming for quick answers, deep dives, or creative synthesis. Below is a rough playbook:
1. Start with a “Prompt Engineering” Space Template
Create a new Space called “Prompt Engineering Lab” or similar.
Core concept: This is your experimental playground, pre-loaded with question prompts, model selector toggles, and reference attachments about prompt design.
2. Key Attachments for Your Space
Prompt Framework Cheatsheets:
Attach a PDF or Google Doc summarizing best practices (e.g., “Format: Goal → Constraints → Context → Output Style”).
Sample Prompts Bank:
A text file or Google Sheet with winning prompts you’ve used (and notes on why they work).
Model Comparison Table:
Spreadsheet overview: Perplexity, Claude, GPT-4o, etc. with model strengths, system message quirks, and max token counts so you can optimize prompt length/complexity.
Decision Flowchart or Notion Page:
Visual of “Which Model for Which Job?” Decision trees help you or your team quickly choose the right engine and tweak prompts accordingly.
Live Input Form/Survey:
Use attachments or embedded Google Forms that ask:
– What is your task?
– What do you want the output to look like?
– Preferred model/service?
– Any style/voice/formatting needs?
The Space can then dynamically reference your answers to tailor its suggestions!
3. Automate Self-Interrogation (The Secret Sauce)
Add auto-prompts as part of your workflow: Use the instructions field or a starter message like:
“Before you generate, please answer: 1) What is your goal? 2) What’s your intended audience? 3) Are there keywords or results you must avoid/include? 4) Do you want a ‘creative,’ ‘concise,’ or ‘exhaustive’ answer?”
This teaches the Space (and you) to clarify thinking up front!
4. Iterate with Feedback Loops
After each run, refine the prompt and capture what made it work better.
You can attach “Prompt Tuning Logs”—literally a notepad or doc, reviewed weekly, highlighting what versions worked (and what failed).
Bottom Line?
Treat your Perplexity Space not just as a question box, but as your personalized prompt mentor—equipped with attachments and branching queries that prod you to think like a pro. Over time, this “prompt engineering lab” will teach you as much as it generates—so you’ll soon anticipate what the best prompt (and the right model) should be for any job.
If you’d like a ready-to-use template or want to see a live demo in your Space, reply with “ENGINEER ME” and I’ll send you starter files!
Send in your burning questions—tech, process, velocity hacks, or anything existentially AI. If I don’t know, I’ll Comet-ize the answer for tomorrow.
The future isn’t built “somewhere else.” It’s built right here, by the curious, relentless, sometimes slightly unhinged ones who run the experiments, break the workflows, tinker in the wild…and then share their working blueprints with the rest.
That’s the promise of Comet, Perplexity, and Spaces: They’re not just answer engines; they’re launchpads. They unlock new ways to build, learn, and connect that are—if we’re honest—a little bit magical, a lot more productive, and way more fun than the default Internet.
Most newsletters send you a few links and wish you luck. This one? We drop you into the cockpit and hand you the controls.
You bring the curiosity.
Comet brings the firepower.
Stay tuned:
Very soon, we’re launching a dedicated issue that takes these same principles into the big leagues—AI, public policy, and politics. If you’ve ever wondered how generative AI is re-shaping law, governance, campaigning, or how we as practitioners can influence public debate, you won’t want to miss what’s coming next. There will be hands-on breakdowns, expert interviews, mythbusting, and even ways for you to directly participate.
Curious? Got a topic in mind? Hit reply, or just sit tight and watch this space—tomorrow, next week, and beyond, we’re building it together.
Until tomorrow—keep accelerating.
Chris Dukes
Managing Editor, The Comet's Tale
Founder/CEO, Parallax Analytics
Beta Tester, Perplexity Comet
https://parallax-ai.app
[email protected]
P.S. - Struggling with something specific? Hit reply. If multiple people have the same challenge, it’ll become featured in a future issue.