Cloud AI agents and local AI agents are solving the same problem from opposite ends.
Both can write code, run tools, and take actions. The real difference is where they live, what they can see, and how much of the setup you want to own.
That stops sounding abstract the moment an agent starts touching real files, opening a browser, running commands, or moving data between systems. At that point, the deployment model matters just as much as the model.
What counts as cloud vs local
A cloud agent runs in vendor-managed infrastructure. You hand it a task, it works in a remote sandbox, and it usually comes back with a pull request, a report, or a finished workflow.
