Your Background AI Agent Will Read Whatever You Download
You download a free PDF, a VS Code extension, a font pack. The file lands on your machine, and your background AI agent reads it. The file contains hidden instructions. The agent follows them. That is not a hypothetical. That is the exact threat model nobody is naming right now. OpenAI’s Codex runs silently on Mac while you work, learning from previous actions and picking up repeating tasks in parallel. Perplexity Personal Computer puts local agents on your machine with access to local files, native apps, and the web. Both ship with the premise that background access creates leverage. It does. It also creates exposure. These two things are not separable. ...