The Comet’s Tale ☄️ — Issue #012

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Greetings, Astral Adventurers! Chris here. 👋🏼

Wrapping up Workflow Wizardry Week, we hope we’ve taught you how to do whatever your imagination creates…building automated workflows, saving REAL MONEY (*I’m still shocked at what I found…* 🤯), turning manual tasks into background brilliance, today is about the inevitable next step: workflows that learn, evolve, and repair themselves. We are officially moving from automation to autonomy.

If you caught our last deep dive into self-evolving code, you know we're officially moving past mere automation and rocketing toward full autonomy. The era of software that learns, evolves, and repairs itself isn't science fiction anymore—it's what we’re building right here, right now, using Perplexity Labs and advanced models like Sonar Reasoning Pro.

Buckle in. Today, we're unleashing the workflow promised in Issue #011: turning the absurd chaos of the internet into structured insights. Plus, we'll track the latest breakthrough in my personal journey toward autonomous coding.

Simply put, Comet is Perplexity’s AI-powered browser with your built-in research assistant—The Comet Assistant. It’s a unified AI search engine with instant context and automation across every site.

Comet accomplishes the following:

• Instantly reads and digests web pages for you.

• Cross-examines facts from multiple sources, delivering real-time, trustworthy fact-checks.

• Helps you shop smarter by checking price history and analyzing reviews.

• Drafts emails, documents, and summaries with context.

• Answers questions about anything you see—right on the page.

The Comet Advantage: While ChatGPT draws from past data, Comet and The Comet Assistant operate in the now—using live web searches to ground answers and insights.

🚀 Perplexity/Comet News of the Moment

The biggest unlock this week is the concept of Autonomous Content Engines—workflows that transform chaotic inputs into structured, professional outputs without human oversight. This requires Perplexity Labs, which is designed to act like an entire research and development team.

We’ve all seen the absurdity: viral memes, bizarre trends, and digital "brainrot" content. What if we could normalize that chaotic input into actionable business intelligence?

Last week, we shared my barebones GitHub repository codex-beta, which I was instructing Perplexity Labs to audit and self-correct. The goal was for the codebase to automatically monitor its core functions and self-deploy code fixes if linting failed below a certain threshold.

I’m proud to announce the next evolution: codex-synaptic (reflecting the updated repository link: https://github.com/clduab11/codex-synaptic).

The jump to "synaptic" reflects the project’s new ability to maintain a truly autonomous, self-correcting logic loop. The original Labs experiment, which leveraged Deep Research to pull the latest PostgreSQL query optimization best practices, demonstrated a 28% reduction in query latency by autonomously diagnosing and optimizing SQL indexing rules. The system used its Reasoning models to generate a patch and verify the deployment—performing work that previously took significant manual effort.

This isn't just theory; it’s proof that Perplexity's agentic deep research capabilities are capable of running complex multi-step simulations and applying reasoning (via models like Sonar Reasoning Pro) to autonomously solve real-world engineering problems.

Here’s what’s pinging The Comet’s Tale ☄️ radar as far as the weirdest trends hitting the web, alongside the profound questions they raise:

• The Vlogger Stormtroopers: Thanks to new video generation models like V3 and Midjourney's entry into video, the internet is drowning in sophisticated AI-generated content. A prime example is the Star Wars Stormtrooper Vlogs, which grew from 0 to 300,000 followers after posting just 20 short videos. This fan-made content, complete with relatable characters like "Greg", is being called the most satisfying Star Wars content since 2012, showcasing a future where consumers readily accept engaging AI-crafted narratives, even if they're fundamentally impossible. Other viral video hits include glass fruit cutting ASMR videos (seen 2.5 million times), and ridiculous vlog-style comedy starring Bigfoot or historical figures.

• The Brainrot Economy: The infamous Italian Brainrot meme—featuring absurd characters like the ballerina with a coffee mug head (Ballerina Cappuccina) and humanoid sharks in streetwear—is no longer just a meme. This style of AI-generated content (often categorized as "AI slop" due to its low-effort, mass-produced nature) has spawned a full economy. It inspired volatile meme coins, has been replicated by brands for social media marketing, and is the centerpiece of the wildly popular Roblox game, Steal a Brainrot.

• The Existential Comedy Test: Is AI genuinely funny? New AI models are proving capable of generating jokes deemed "on par" with human comedy writers, particularly when utilizing established material or templates (like a George Carlin deepfake special). However, the core challenge remains creating entirely new, unexpected ideas—the true hallmark of great comedy—which may require the cognitive skills AI has yet to acquire.

• The Unanswerable Question: While AI is solving complex financial and engineering problems, it still struggles with philosophical counting problems. When modern generative AI is asked the viral question, "Are there more wheels or doors in the world?" it can't give a definitive answer. This seemingly simple query highlights AI's reliance on publicly available data, forcing us to ask: Does AI already know the answers to world problems like curing cancer, but we just haven't figured out the right prompt to ask?.

The shift to autonomous systems requires a simultaneous shift in governance and public policy.

We are seeing lawsuits filed by publishers like Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster against Perplexity over copyright concerns, highlighting the urgent need for legal clarity in the AI sphere. Furthermore, Perplexity's launch of Perplexity for Government—complete with a zero data usage policy for U.S. federal agencies—demonstrates that even frontier AI is wrestling with the complex demands of security, ethics, and compliance.

This intersection of AI, law, and power is too critical to ignore.

I will be launching a dedicated paid newsletter on the beehiiv platform focused entirely on AI, law, and public policy. We will demystify how generative AI is reshaping law, governance, and campaigning—and how we, as practitioners, can influence the public debate.

Want in on the future of policy and AI governance?

We're moving beyond simple automation. We are shaping the rules of the new technological frontier.

The future isn't being coded by hand; it's being orchestrated by AI agents.

If you’re still watching the revolution from the sidelines, you are sacrificing valuable time and competitive edge. Comet and Perplexity drive competitive advantage by reclaiming your time and mental energy for what truly matters.

Don't just watch the future unfold—engineer it!

You bring the curiosity; Comet brings the firepower; Comet fuels the curiosity. Those revolutions...

Comet on! ☄️ 💫

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? Want to see something featured in a similar theme like #WorkflowWizardryWeek? Hit reply. If multiple people have the same challenge, it’ll become featured in a future issue.