# Agents could make cloud development environments practical again

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/agents-could-make-cloud-development-environments-practical/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Tibo Sottiaux](https://realalpha.app/builders/tibo-sottiaux/) · Tibo Sottiaux is an engineer who created Codex and head of Core Products & Platform at OpenAI. · Led OpenAI's launches of Codex, ChatGPT Work and the new Dots personal agent platform.
- Host: [Gergely Orosz](https://realalpha.app/people/gergely-orosz/) · Host, The Pragmatic Engineer · Spent four years at Uber heading mobile, web and backend teams; shipped part of its payments system.
- Show: The Pragmatic Engineer
- Episode: [Building Codex with Tibo Sottiaux](https://realalpha.app/v/sLSTM9znQNs/), Sep 9, 2026
- Moment: 32:03 to 36:46 of the episode (5 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/agents-could-make-cloud-development-environments-practical/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/sLSTM9znQNs/?t=1923

## Quote

> “With the level of capabilities that we have in agents now, it's like **the setup almost is free**, right?”
> — [Tibo Sottiaux](https://realalpha.app/builders/tibo-sottiaux/) at [35:24](https://realalpha.app/v/sLSTM9znQNs/?t=2124) · The Pragmatic Engineer

## Takeaways

1. Local, sandboxed execution is the default today.
2. Cloud VMs can move agent work off a laptop.
3. Agents may make setup and maintenance far cheaper.

## About this segment

Tibo Sottiaux expects agents to reduce the setup and upkeep that made cloud dev boxes cumbersome. That could bring back remote environments and let work continue away from a laptop.

From “Building Codex with Tibo Sottiaux”, Sep 9, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/sLSTM9znQNs/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[32:08](https://realalpha.app/v/sLSTM9znQNs/?t=1928) Speaking of the harness, can you tell me how it works today in the sense of like, when I start a codex task, does it run always on my machine? Does it choose the cloud? Does it use a sandbox? And how do I control this or know this? Or how much should I know about this as an engineer? Yes. So by default, it runs sandboxed. Everything that if there is like a command that should run with additional permissions outside of the sandbox, it will ask you as a user for permission.

[32:48](https://realalpha.app/v/sLSTM9znQNs/?t=1968) But everything, every tool execution happens within the sandbox by default, and it runs entirely on the machine, your local machine. And this has been the case for, you know, more than a year. here now but it is something that is evolving and shifting where like you can select to run this in the cloud which then runs in like a managed vm where it's the same vm that you get through chat gpt work and you can you can sort of like inspect it but like it runs in a cata container it's like a secure environment and so if everything runs inside of that vm and it doesn't run on your machine and then the only thing that happens in your machine is like the the your input and then the streaming back of the output and so that you know obviously then uh is like much nicer on your cpu and your machine and you can scale much much um much more and this is like just a step um it's

[33:47](https://realalpha.app/v/sLSTM9znQNs/?t=2027) going to be much more seamless in the future um to like you know use cloud machines and then you You know, maybe have a combination of like partial execution on your laptop, partial execution on cloud machines. And really the thing that we're thinking about that is very natural is as models just get better and more capable, they can leverage so much more compute and many more resources than are available on your local machine.

[34:16](https://realalpha.app/v/sLSTM9znQNs/?t=2056) And so it would be a constraint at some point to just limit execution on your local machine. But one thing that is great about it running locally, and I think the reason I love it when it runs locally, of course, it's a pain because if I'm doing some work, it's like, you know, I have several agents, it's eating CPU. If I want to close my laptop, I cannot kind of leave it like half open. Right. When I was in one of the offices of an AI company, I had it half open and they're like, are you running agents?

[34:43](https://realalpha.app/v/sLSTM9znQNs/?t=2083) I'm like, yeah, I have one running. I get it. But the reason I do it because I have my local tools. I have my local Postgres database. I have my this and that. How are you thinking about the cloud is amazing, but it doesn't have this setup or it's just a pain to set it up. Are you thinking or are you experimenting with making these setups? And I'm kind of reminded of a topic that we talked about pre-A, which is cloud development environments and like 2022, 23, they're hot.

[35:11](https://realalpha.app/v/sLSTM9znQNs/?t=2111) And then we talked about AI more. But I think outside of large tech companies, like cloud dev boxes really never took off because there's a very big upfront cost. And then you need to pay like a maintenance cost as well. And you just, you know, don't benefit from it as like a solo developer or like a small team. With the level of capabilities that we have in agents now, it's like the setup almost is free, right?

[35:34](https://realalpha.app/v/sLSTM9znQNs/?t=2134) So like this, the setup cost and this maintenance cost is like, if your agent is capable of doing it, you know, it should just do it for you. So for example, if you're saying like, hey, you know, I have like, I have my local SQLite Or I have a local server and MCPs and whatnot. It's like, how hard is it to actually configure exactly the same setup and keep it in sync on a cloud dev box? Well, maybe it's not that hard if the model just does it for you.

[36:00](https://realalpha.app/v/sLSTM9znQNs/?t=2160) And so I think we're going to see a resurgence of fully cloud orchestrated machines, which then frees you from your laptop, right? It's like one thing that we've seen a ton of success with with ChatGPT work is like, it's just available on your mobile. I start my day just dictating a bunch of tasks into it next to the coffee and it just does it it has access to my calendar it has access to my email it has access to slack and it's just so awesome to just be able to walk around and you know get stuff done without having to you know carry my laptop everywhere and I think it's the same thing like you know we ship like codex remote where you know execution is like still happening on your laptop but it would be wonderful if you