Perplexity running a Mac Mini as an always-on agent is interesting because I went the same route for different reasons. VPS seemed easier but native macOS apps (iMessage, Apple Mail, screen capture) just don't work in containers.
The headless part was harder than expected though. Screen capture and UI automation break without a virtual display, even on Apple Silicon.
Ended up needing BetterDisplay to create a fake monitor before anything worked reliably. The sandbox tooling list here is useful. Mastra remote sandboxes especially, because the permission boundary between agent and system is where most of my early failures happened.
Perplexity running a Mac Mini as an always-on agent is interesting because I went the same route for different reasons. VPS seemed easier but native macOS apps (iMessage, Apple Mail, screen capture) just don't work in containers.
The headless part was harder than expected though. Screen capture and UI automation break without a virtual display, even on Apple Silicon.
Ended up needing BetterDisplay to create a fake monitor before anything worked reliably. The sandbox tooling list here is useful. Mastra remote sandboxes especially, because the permission boundary between agent and system is where most of my early failures happened.
aha luckily i have an extra monitor around - but good to know about betterdisplay!