Manus, the AI agent startup Meta acquired for roughly $2 billion in late 2025, shipped a desktop app on March 13 with a feature called My Computer. The pitch: let the agent run terminal commands directly on your local machine. Available now on macOS and Windows, per the announcement post.
Until now, Manus operated entirely in a cloud sandbox. My Computer bridges the gap by executing CLI instructions through a desktop app, giving the agent access to local files, installed dev tools, and hardware resources like GPUs. Every command requires explicit user approval, though an "Always Allow" toggle exists for trusted routines. The company demo'd an internal test where Manus built a working Swift translation app on a Mac in about 20 minutes, all through terminal commands, no Xcode window opened.
The timing is hard to ignore. Perplexity announced its own "Personal Computer" feature days earlier, running a persistent AI agent on a dedicated Mac mini. Anthropic released Cowork in late February. NVIDIA reportedly has NemoClaw in the works. Four companies shipping local-machine AI agents within three weeks of each other.
Manus is also pitching idle hardware utilization: got a Mac mini running 24/7 in a corner? The agent can use it for ML training or LLM inference remotely, controlled from your phone. That framing echoes Perplexity's pitch almost word for word. One conspicuous absence given Meta's ownership: no WhatsApp or Messenger integration yet. You'd expect Meta's $2 billion acquisition to surface in its messaging apps, but for now Manus remains a standalone product. The feature integrates with existing Manus connectors like Google Calendar and Gmail, plus scheduled tasks for recurring local automation.
Bottom Line
Manus joins Perplexity, Anthropic, and NVIDIA in shipping local-machine AI agents within weeks of each other, though Meta's messaging apps remain curiously unconnected.
Quick Facts
- Available now on macOS and Windows
- Works via CLI commands in the local terminal
- Every command requires user approval (or opt-in "Always Allow")
- Meta acquired Manus for ~$2B in late 2025
- Announced March 13, 2026
