Your laptop is a terrible place to run an AI agent.
It sleeps when you close the lid. It competes with your browser, your Slack, and your Spotify for resources. It can't be accessed remotely. And if you're running a multi-hour research workflow, your laptop is hostage until it's done.
AI agents need their own machine. We built one you can launch in under a minute.
The Case for Cloud AI Agents
Local-first is great for development. But production agent workloads need:
Always-on availability: Your competitor monitoring agent should run at 3am. Your content pipeline should process overnight. Your webhook receivers need to respond 24/7.
Dedicated resources: An agent running complex research, image generation, and web scraping shouldn't be fighting your IDE for CPU and memory.
Remote access: Start a workflow from your phone. Check on agent status from a different machine. Collaborate with teammates who can all access the same agent.
Isolation: If an agent misbehaves — infinite loop, runaway memory, excessive network calls — it crashes its own machine, not yours.
What You Get
When you launch a HexaClaw cloud instance, you get a fully configured AI agent machine:
- OpenClaw pre-installed — the open-source AI agent framework, ready to go
- HexaClaw tools built in — image gen, video gen, web search, memory, email, and 12+ more tools available natively
- Pre-loaded skills — curated catalog of 29 community-built agent skills
- Multiple size options — from lightweight (great for simple agents and experimentation) to powerful (for parallel workloads and heavy compute)
No SSH setup. No configuration files to edit. No npm install dance. You click launch, and 60 seconds later you have a running agent environment with a web-based control panel.
Why We Offer Two Infrastructure Providers
Not all workloads have the same priorities. Some need the reliability and ecosystem of a major cloud provider. Some need the lowest possible price.
We offer both:
- Premium compute: Higher reliability, more instance size options, integrated with major cloud ecosystem. Best for production workloads, team environments, and when uptime matters most.
- Budget compute: Same software, same tools, roughly the same performance — at about one-third the cost. Best for experimentation, personal projects, and cost-sensitive workloads.
You choose based on your priorities. The agent experience is identical either way.
How Pricing Works
Cloud instances bill by the hour in credits. The cheapest option costs about 30 credits per hour. With the free tier's 1,000 welcome credits, that's over 33 hours of cloud agent time — enough to seriously explore what's possible.
To prevent bill shock, the system monitors your credit balance continuously. If your balance gets low, you get a warning. If it gets critically low, the instance hibernates automatically — your work is preserved, but billing stops. No surprise charges. No waking up to an empty account.
The Golden Image Approach
Every instance launches from a pre-built machine image. This isn't a blank VM that runs a setup script for 15 minutes. It's a snapshot of a fully configured system: OS, runtime, agent framework, tools, skills — all pre-installed and pre-tested.
The result: your instance is usable in under a minute, not 15 minutes. And because the image is tested before it's published, you don't hit "npm install failed" or "incompatible Node version" issues. It just works.
When we update the tools or add new skills, we publish a new image. Your next instance gets the latest everything.
What Agents Can Do on Their Own Machine
Long-running research: Set an agent on a multi-hour research task. Check back when it's done. Your laptop is free.
Scheduled workflows: Configure agents to run workflows on a schedule — daily research digests, weekly competitor reports, hourly data monitoring.
Parallel workloads: Run multiple agents simultaneously. A researcher, a writer, and a designer working on the same project — each with their own resources, coordinating through the task board.
Team collaboration: Multiple team members can access the same instance. Your agent's work is accessible to everyone, not locked on one person's machine.
Background processing: Image generation, video rendering, web crawling — these are slow operations. Let them run in the cloud while you do other work.
The Surprising Lesson: Cheap Compute Changes Behavior
We expected users to launch instances for specific tasks and shut them down. Instead, many users leave instances running continuously. At 30 credits per hour, a full 24-hour day costs 720 credits. For users doing regular agent work, the cost of keeping an always-on agent is less than a cup of coffee per day.
This changes how people use agents. Instead of "I need to do a task, let me start an agent," it becomes "I have an agent running, let me give it something to do." The agent becomes a teammate, not a tool you start up and shut down.
Getting Started
Launch your first instance from the HexaClaw dashboard. Pick your size, pick your provider, and click launch. Your agent is ready in under a minute.
The free tier includes enough credits for 33+ hours of compute. That's a lot of agent time.
Your AI agent deserves better than fighting Chrome for memory on your laptop. Give it its own machine.