More or Less · Topics · Episode #160
Sam vs. Dave: Why Are You Running Anything Locally?
Clip from the full recording, 40:27–42:24 · download mp4 · watch at this point on YouTube
Dave explains OpenClaw engineers need serious local Mac horsepower to manage dozens of agents at once; Sam, who treats his laptop as a "truly dumb terminal," genuinely cannot understand why anyone would compute anything on the device in front of them.
Sam interrupts Dave’s compute explanation with the actual disagreement: why does any of this need to happen locally at all? He runs powerful machines in the cloud for everything, coordinates them from one cloud instance, and would never do serious work on his own machine — he says he could do it all from an iPad. Dave insists you need both: your local machine still has to talk to and coordinate whatever’s running in the cloud, and if you’re running fifty Codex agents at once from a Mac, that Mac needs a lot of RAM to manage each thread.
Sam pushes back that he doesn’t see why the coordinating machine needs to be local at all — his laptops, including a cheap off-the-shelf Air, are increasingly “truly dumb terminals” tunneling into one cloud instance that itself manages a fleet of other cloud instances as beefy as needed. Jess, speaking for the non-engineers, asks the obvious question: who is actually running fifty Codex agents at once? Dave’s answer: a lot of people, including OpenClaw’s entire engineering team.
Key points
- Sam: runs powerful machines entirely in the cloud, coordinated from one instance; would never do serious compute locally, could manage it all from an iPad.
- Dave: you still need a local machine to talk to and orchestrate whatever's running in the cloud.
- Dave: running fifty Codex agents at once from a Mac requires a Mac with a lot of RAM to manage each thread.
- Sam: his laptops, including a cheap off-the-shelf Air, are increasingly "truly dumb terminals" tunneling into a single cloud instance.
- Jess, for the non-engineers: who is actually running fifty agents at once? Dave: "a lot" — including OpenClaw's entire engineering team.
Where they landed
Quotes
“”— Sam
“”— Sam
“”— Dave
Suggested tweets
Sam Lessin: “My laptops are truly dumb terminals.” Dave Morin: you still need serious local horsepower to run fifty agents at once. Who's right?
Tweet this →“Who needs to run fifty Codex agents at once?” Jess Lessin, speaking for every non-engineer listening to this podcast
Tweet this →Dave Morin says OpenClaw's entire engineering team runs dozens of agents simultaneously off local Macs. Sam Lessin still doesn't get why
Tweet this →All topics · Full episode #160 + transcript · Subscribe on YouTube · Spotify