Goodbye Background Agents

Our team writes 100% of our code in the cloud using Tembo. This is the future, and more teams are realizing it.

Historically, teams used most cloud agent tools as “background agents” for quick, one-off tasks that required little iteration. Almost never would teams think to reach for a background agent for sync work. This is changing.

Most high-agency startups in Silicon Valley and around the world increasingly rely on cloud agents for their day-to-day work.

To us, the table stakes for moving 100% of our local coding workflows to the cloud are clear:

You Need a Real Computer

No container BS. You need a persistent machine that can run for as long as the work takes.

Cloud agents can pause, sleep, and resume from snapshots without rebuilding their environments from scratch.

It must run Docker, Postgres, Docker Compose, Chromium, and anything else your workflow requires. These are normal parts of serious engineering workflows, not edge cases.

It also needs a real desktop for both you and the agent: computer use for the agent, plus a desktop view you can watch or take over.

You also need plenty of RAM, fast CPUs, and lots of disk. A majority of serious dev teams need at least 32 GB just to run a build. We’ve even talked to some companies that need 128 GB just to run tests or type-check their repo.

Environment Configurability

Cloud computers must be easy to configure, ideally through a declarative configuration your team can version and reuse.

Environment variables and secrets are part of that configuration too. Agents need secure access to the right credentials without committing them to the repo or adding them for every run.

The environment must also support custom dependencies, arbitrary scripts, and whatever else the work requires. As with local development, installing what you need should be easy.

Iteration & Verification Is Key

The workflow must let you iterate on a branch or series of changes before opening a PR.

Most cloud coding agents open a PR immediately. You should see the diff BEFORE A PR IS OPEN so you can iterate, test, and verify the work. Only open the PR when it is ready to share with your team.

Previews

The environment should let you expose local ports and view changes in a browser, just like you would locally.

Each preview must preserve the local development loop. If you expose a Next.js app, every update should hot reload in the browser.

If an agent changes a web app, you should be able to open it, click through it, find issues, and keep iterating in the same environment. Reading a diff is not enough to verify every change.

Fast

Every capability above must be FAST AF.

Cloud agents must feel as fast as local. Otherwise, developers will return to their CLI or GUI.

Full VMs must spin up quickly. Repos should not be cloned for every run, especially in multi-repo workspaces. Dependencies should be pre-installed, not installed on demand. Otherwise, the entire loop will feel slow.

Speed is not a nice-to-have here. It decides whether the cloud becomes the default place you run agents or a thing you try once before going back to local.

Interface

The interface has to be top tier because you are going to spend a lot of time in it.

It needs to make it easy to see what the agent is doing, inspect the diff, open a terminal, view a preview, send a follow-up, and decide when the work is ready for a PR. If the interface is not excellent, the infrastructure underneath it will not matter. The whole experience will still feel remote.

A live VNC preview should stream the agent’s desktop directly into the UI so you can watch its work or take over.

Bonus: Nice to Haves

Artifacts

Artifacts let you package arbitrary files, links, and other outputs from a session or VM. Because the work happens inside an isolated cloud VM, artifacts make selected outputs visible, accessible, and linked to their source.

Files

Some people still need to look at files :). Cloud agents should make it easy to open a file or make a quick inline edit.

We’ve covered all these requirements at Tembo. Join the best engineering teams building with us at app.tembo.io.