Running agents locally is a dead end. The future of software development is hundreds of agents running at all times of the day — in response to bug alerts, emails, Slack messages, meetings, and because they were launched by other agents. The only sane way to support this is with cloud containers.
Local agents hit a wall quickly:
• No scale. You can only run as many agents (and copies of your app) as your hardware allows.
• No isolation. Local agents share your filesystem, network, and credentials. One rogue agent can affect everything else.
• No team visibility. Teammates can't see what your agents are doing, review their work, or interact with them.
• No always-on capability. Agents can't respond to signals (alerts, messages, other agents) when your machine is off or asleep.
Cloud agents solve all of these problems. Each agent runs in its own isolated container with its own environment, and they can run 24/7 without depending on any single machine.
This year, every software company will have to make the transition from work happening on developer's local machines from 9am-6pm to work happening in the cloud 24/7 -- or get left behind by companies who do.