Back to Catalog
Agentic AI
Planning & Control Flow
Local-to-Cloud Handoff
Promote an interactive local agent session mid-task to a detached cloud agent that keeps running after the developer disconnects and reports back asynchronously.
Intent & Description
🎯 Intent
Promote an interactive local agent session mid-task to a detached cloud agent that keeps running after the developer disconnects and reports back asynchronously.
📋 Context
A developer is driving an agent interactively from a laptop or terminal, refining a plan turn by turn. At some point the work becomes long-running and self-contained — a refactor, a test-fixing loop, a multi-step build — and no longer needs steering. The developer wants to close the laptop without abandoning the run.
💡 Solution
- Expose an explicit handoff action in the interactive session (command, prefix, or button) that snapshots the current state and transfers it to a cloud agent runtime. - The cloud runtime clones or mounts the repository, restores the plan and conversation context, and resumes the run autonomously in its own sandbox with its own credentials. - The local client detaches; the run survives disconnect. - On completion or when input is required, the cloud agent notifies the developer out of band and offers a way to reattach, review the diff, or pull the run back to local.
Real-world Use Case
- An interactive run becomes long and self-contained and no longer needs turn-by-turn steering.
- The developer needs to disconnect, sleep the machine, or go mobile without killing the run.
- A cloud runtime with repo access, credentials, and a sandbox is available to continue execution.
- Accumulated plan and context are worth preserving rather than re-prompting from scratch.
Source
Advantages
- Developer is freed from babysitting a long run and can disconnect or go mobile.
- Accumulated plan, context, and partial progress carry across the handoff.
- Cloud execution outlasts network drops, laptop sleep, and shift boundaries.
- The same task can be steered interactively while cheap, then detached once mechanical.
Disadvantages
- Cloud runtime needs its own repo access, credentials, and sandbox, widening the trust and secret-handling surface.
- A detached run can drift or burn budget unobserved if notification and budget limits are weak.
- State transfer is lossy if local-only context (uncommitted files, environment, tool state) is not captured.
- Reattaching to a moved session adds UX and consistency complexity.