How to choose

Last updated: 20 September 2026

The field looks crowded. Three questions eliminate most of it, and the answers converge quickly if you ask them in order.

Question 1: does it need to touch your machine

This is the dividing line.

Yes — editing code, organising files, running commands, reading local data. That rules out cloud orchestration entirely; it runs on someone else's server and can't see your disk.

No — you only feed it text, or it only reads public web pages. Cloud is fine, and you don't install anything.

Most people are in the first group without realising. They spend an afternoon wiring a flow before noticing that what they actually wanted was "sort these photos by date" — which cloud can't do.

Question 2: once, or every day

This decides whether building a process is worth it.

Frequency	What to do
Occasionally	Just ask in conversation. Don't build a flow — building costs more than it saves
A few times a week	Use a command-line agent and save the phrases you repeat
Daily, same steps	Worth building into an orchestration flow

The common waste is turning a one-off into a permanent process: three days connecting nodes and tuning parameters, then the requirement changes and the diagram is dead.

Question 3: can the data leave

Some material shouldn't go to a third-party server — client records, internal documents, unreleased code.

Local tools win here by construction: the data sits on your machine, and only what you send to the model goes out. Cloud orchestration requires uploading to their servers and trusting their handling.

That's not a claim that cloud is unsafe. It's that this is something you confirm deliberately, rather than assume.

After all three

Touches your machine + occasional    → install one command-line agent
Touches your machine + daily, many   → CLI agents + a desktop aggregator
Text only + fixed process            → cloud orchestration
Text only + occasional               → just use a chat window

One last thing: start before you optimise

Don't spend two weeks on selection research. Install something workable, run three real tasks, and you'll immediately notice what's awkward. That awkwardness is your actual requirement.

If you've settled on CLI agents and you're running more than one, see what Aiglade addresses. If you haven't started, read what is an AI agent first.