I don't even know what I would do with a desktop app. I'm running these things in headless VMs, so I can run them with `--dangerously-skip-permissions` or whatever. I don't trust them, even without that flag, on my desktop/laptop.

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ahmadyan an hour ago | parent | next [-]

a well-design IDE should abstract that away, i.e. run the agent in the headless VMs while give you an abstraction that you would feel like you are running the agent locally with all the benefits (editor, browser, diffs, debugger, etc)

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teaspoon 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Good desktop apps in this category can manage agents across any number of remote SSH hosts.

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SwellJoe 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

But, it's still running on my desktop/laptop. I don't trust them to run on my machine. But, I guess I could run one VM with a desktop to contain the desktop app. Or, just keep using CLI agents.

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ghm2199 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

For local tasks you can only give agents delegated that execute your deterministic read or write on an allowed set of files(e.g pi does this) and execute rights only on containers with no network access. That should get you 95% unblocked for most tasks you want to do with an LLM pretty safely.

You can do a brainstorming with web on a remote container prototyping based on that brainstorm on another container with no network access.

The one thing that is less trustworthy is using local agents for service management, you definitely want to have them scoped to dev/testing. I would never trust an agent to execute any command in production or sensitive data at all

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scorpioxy 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Is the trust concern for the agent running in any form on your machine? Like in a VM on your machine as well or do you mean on the host itself?

I have read about people giving an agent full access to their main system saying they have nothing of value. To me, that's a strange opinion to have with the distinction between what's private and what's secret.

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SwellJoe an hour ago | parent [-]

I don't run agents directly on my desktop/laptop machine. I run them in VMs or containers (sometimes in containers on VMs). There have been too many credentials stealing exploits via prompt injection and the like for me to be willing to let an agent roam around on my personal system.

I've also started creating new github deploy keys for each repo in use on a VM, so the blast area for any given agent disaster is "a couple/few github repos and whatever credentials were needed for the agent/model".

I wouldn't let a coworker, even one I know pretty well, log into my personal account on my machines...why would I let an agent that can be tricked into uploading all my credentials to an attackers web server?

The agents have sandboxes, but those are loose. Not enforced by anything outside of the agent harness itself.

	▲	scorpioxy 31 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Oh yeah, that sounds wise to me. Some people don't run the agents on a VM on their own machine and opt for a VPS somewhere. And I was wondering if privacy and security had anything to do with their decision.
	▲	notshore an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I'm working on a credential broker that would keep credentials vaulted and parcel out access on a per-grant basis. Is that something you'd find useful or is your setup comprehensive enough? We would be allowing people to draft access policies with natural language, I figured it would be useful for things like vercel, stripe access etc.

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nutjob2 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What's stopping a CLI from doing the same?

I've never used IDEs and never will, why are these things being constantly shoved down our throats?

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InsideOutSanta 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Zcode allows you to connect to a Docker container, or to a VM using ssh.

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FergusArgyll 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I finally repurposed an old server just for that and for anyone reading who has not had a chance to use --dangerously-etc. it's awesome, do it :)