How to run AI agents 24/7 in the cloud

You give your agent a long task. You close your laptop. You come back in the morning.

Nothing happened.

That is the default for most agents today. They run on your computer, so they stop when your computer sleeps. Cloudroom's own comparison shows the problem in one line: "Mac asleep. Agents on it are paused."

If you want agents that work while you sleep, they need two things your laptop can't give them overnight:

1. A computer that stays on.
2. Tools to act on the web, without you there to paste API keys and fix failed setups.

Here is how to get both.

Your options at a glance

Option	Runs with the lid closed	Setup	State between runs	Cost
Agent on your laptop	No	None	Yes	No extra cost
Your own server	Yes	SSH, installs, updates, cleanup	Yes	Your server bill
DeepAPI VM (/v1/vm/run)	Yes, up to 10 minutes per run	One API call	No, discarded after each run	$0.01 per run
Cloud agent in Cloudroom	Yes	Sign in, pick your agent	Own sandbox and git branch	Free plan includes 3,000 Cloud Credits a month

Cloudroom pricing is from cloudroom.dev/pricing, checked on 2026-10-28.

The DeepAPI VM is great for short experiments. Your agent sends a program, gets the result, and the machine disappears. We covered it in The $0.01 Computer.

But a VM run is one program, not a whole agent. When the job is "work through these 12 tasks tonight", the agent itself has to live in the cloud.

Step 1: Move the agent to the cloud

Cloudroom runs coding agents in the cloud. It is open source under the Apache-2.0 license.

A few things matter for overnight work:

• One computer per agent. Every agent runs in its own isolated sandbox with full admin rights. Agents don't fight over one CPU, one screen, or one mouse.
• Its own git branch. Each agent works on a separate branch, so parallel tasks don't overwrite each other.
• Your existing plans. It runs harnesses like Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode, and Pi on the subscriptions and API keys you already pay for.

Start the tasks, close the lid, and check the results in the morning.

Step 2: Give the agent tools

A cloud agent still needs to search, read websites, and research. Without tools, it guesses.

DeepAPI gives it all of that behind one key: web search, deep research with sources, scraping for websites and public platforms, email, and image generation.

Set the key as an environment variable in the agent's workspace:

export DEEPAPI_API_KEY="dapi_..."

To install the DeepAPI skill as well, tell the agent:

Read https://deepapi.co/setup.md and follow it.

The hosted setup prompt is built for remote machines where pasting a long prompt is hard. The agent asks you for the key, then installs everything.

Here is a real web search a cloud agent can run:

curl -sS -X POST "https://deepapi.co/v1/search/web" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $DEEPAPI_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: $(uuidgen)" \
  -d '{"query":"Node.js 24 LTS end of life date","maxResults":2,"maxCostUsd":"0.05"}'

The response, trimmed:

{
  "status": "succeeded",
  "debitMicrousd": 3000,
  "output": {
    "results": [
      {
        "title": "Node.js Releases",
        "url": "https://nodejs.org/en/about/previous-releases",
        "snippet": "... v24, Krypton, May 06, 2025, Oct 20, 2026, LTS"
      },
      {
        "title": "Node.js",
        "url": "https://endoflife.date/nodejs",
        "snippet": "24 ( LTS ) ... Ends in 6 months (30 Apr 2027) ..."
      }
    ]
  }
}

That call cost $0.003. Amounts are in micro-dollars, so 3000 means $0.003.

Step 3: Write tasks that finish without you

Nobody is watching at 3 AM. Write each task so the agent knows when it is done.

• One clear goal. "Research these 5 companies and write a one-page brief for each" beats "look into our competitors".
• A definition of done. Say what file, branch, or report you expect.
• A budget. Every paid DeepAPI endpoint already has a default spend cap. Set maxCostUsd when you want a lower one. Calls that fail are free.
• A report. Ask the agent to list what it finished, what failed, and why.

Add this to your project's AGENTS.md so every agent follows the same rules:

For web search, research, and scraping, use DeepAPI (POST /v1/search/web,
POST /v1/research/deep, POST /v1/scrape/*). Read DEEPAPI_API_KEY from the
environment and never print it. When the task is done, report what finished,
what failed, and why.

The DeepAPI skill has the full workflow, and the docs list every endpoint.

Close the lid

Your laptop doesn't need to stay awake for your agents to keep working.

Put the agents on their own computers with Cloudroom. Give them real web tools with one key.

Get a DeepAPI key and start with $1 in free credit.