Cloud agents need your logins to exist—why this dev went local-first
nav8_ai · reddit · 2026-09-24
A Mac browser-agent developer (disclosed bias) argues a rarely-discussed problem: hosted agents need your credentials on someone else's computer, making the most automatable boring tasks—bookkeeping, payroll, ad accounts with live cards—exactly the ones you can't hand over. Plus the watching problem: cloud agents run where you can't see; local ones leave just a log and "done".
Their alternative: a local process driving real tabs in sessions you're already logged into—no credentials handed over, visible page and field typing, stop-and-ask before any spend/send/delete/publish, and MCP tokens scoped per-agent in the macOS keychain instead of one global grant. Trade-offs admitted: the Mac must stay awake, macOS only.
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