Migration

Moving what you have built onto a machine of its own, so it keeps working when you shut the laptop.

What you end up with. Your agents and your projects on a machine that stays on, reachable from whichever computer you happen to be sitting at.

run my ai agent on a machine at home

What people walked out with

Work that carries on with the lid shut
One machine, on all the time
Reach it from whichever computer you are at
No subscription in the middle
New keys for the new machine, never copied ones
An old laptop is enough
He demystifies the engineering process and gives you the confidence to bring your ideas to life. David Grimley

Everything starts on the laptop, because that is the computer you have. It works until the day the thing you built is worth more running than it is sitting there: a job that takes an hour, a project you want to look at from the other computer, an agent you would rather leave working while you go and do something else.

That is the point where the laptop stops being the right place for it. Not because it is too slow. Because you close it, and you take it with you.

What actually moves

Less than people expect. An agent is a program plus the folder it works in, so what travels is the folder, the keys it needs, and the note that says how it was set up. The machine at the other end needs the same agent installed and somewhere to put the folder.

The part that takes the time is not the copying. It is finding everything that was only ever on one computer: the thing you installed months ago and forgot, the file with the passwords in it, the setting you changed once by hand.

What it runs on

An old laptop with the lid shut, a small box that lives behind the television, or a machine you rent by the month. All three are the same job, and the first one is usually already sitting in a cupboard.

The machine has to be on, on the network, and able to run for weeks without anybody logging into it. Everything past that is preference.

What it costs

The machine, the power it draws, and an evening. There is no subscription in the middle of it, which is most of the reason to do it at all.

What it costs afterwards is that you now own a computer that other things depend on. It needs a backup, and it needs somebody to notice when it stops.

What goes wrong

The keys. Moving a project means moving what it is allowed to do. A key copied onto a second machine now exists in two places, and the one you are not looking at is the one that leaks. Make new ones for the new machine and turn the old ones off.

Reaching it from outside the house. The moment the box answers from the internet it is a thing strangers can knock on. There are safe ways to do it, and the unsafe way is the one that takes two minutes.

Assuming it is a backup. A second computer holding the only copy of something is not a backup, it is a second place to lose it.

Nobody notices it stopped. A laptop tells you when something has gone wrong, because you are looking at it. A box under the desk says nothing at all.