Cloud vs Local: Where Things Live

The desktop app offers every session a choice — run in the cloud or on your computer — and misunderstanding it is the #1 source of "why didn't my automation fire?" tickets. Cloud sessions are identical to web and mobile: they sync across devices, continue when your laptop sleeps, and their scheduled tasks always fire, because OpenAI's servers don't close their lids. Local sessions can touch your files and desktop apps — but they exist only on that machine, can't be picked up from your phone, and their scheduled tasks silently don't run unless the computer is open.

So the rules: schedule from cloud surfaces, always. Go local only when the task needs your filesystem or desktop apps. Skills follow the same split — cloud skills serve web/mobile/cloud sessions, local skills serve local ones, and they don't sync across the divide (Riley's on-camera plea to OpenAI to merge them hasn't landed yet). If a skill matters everywhere, it needs to exist on both sides for now.

Local mode has a quiet virtue worth knowing: it's the cautious cousin of full Codex — no terminal commands, more frequent permission asks. If agent-on-my-computer makes you nervous, local Work mode is the gentler on-ramp.