By Billy G.R. · 2 October 2026
Checked 2026-10-02. Author: Billy G.R. Retail prices move; the hardware catalog stores the Amazon snapshot, not a promise of stock.
Claim. Cursor Cloud Agents run in isolated cloud VMs. The docs say they were formerly called Background Agents.
Method. cursor.com/docs/cloud-agent, read 2 October 2026. Launch surfaces listed there include desktop, web, iOS, Slack, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Linear, and the API.
As of.
Claim. Continue’s public site says Continue has joined Cursor and that the open-source codebase remains available. I did not confirm a read-only GitHub flag.
Method. continue.dev, read 2 October 2026.
As of.
Claim. A local coding model at 32B Q4 needs about 21.2 GB. A 7B needs about 6.2 GB.
Method. 32 × 0.5 × 1.2 + 2 and 7 × 0.5 × 1.2 + 2. K2-Horizon-32B and K2-Horizon-7B are the parameter counts used.
As of.
Methodology — parameter math, quantization bytes, and the source list.
Cursor Cloud Agents run in isolated virtual machines with a cloned repo, dependencies, secrets, and network access. The docs page says the old name was Background Agents. You start them from the desktop app (the Cloud option under the agent input), from cursor.com/agents, from the iOS app, from Slack, from a GitHub or Bitbucket comment, from Linear, or from the API. They can open a pull request, record artifacts, and hand you a remote desktop on that VM. Billing on the page is API pricing for the model you pick, and you need a paid Cursor plan. None of that uses the GPU in the tower under your desk.
The environment is the product. An agent that cannot run tests is just a diff generator, which is why Cursor spends the page on snapshots, Dockerfiles, Tailscale, and secrets. There is a separate note for running tool execution on hardware you manage (“Self-Hosted Machines”). I am not going to invent how that install works; follow their doc if you need it. Hooks from your repo can run in the cloud VM. Hooks from your home directory cannot, because the VM does not have your laptop’s home folder. That single sentence is the privacy boundary: the repo you connected is in play, your local dotfiles are not.
Grok Bot inside Cursor is a different feature. It is still their cloud computer. See the Grok Bot guide and do not mix the two names.
Three tools cover the jobs Cloud Agents advertise, with worse parallelism and better file locality.
You can run one local agent loop well. You cannot honestly claim “as many as you want in parallel” on a 24 GB card. Each extra model is another footprint. One 27B or 32B server, several clients: that is the local version of parallel agents.
Formula params × 0.5 × 1.2 + 2 at Q4. Longer context is why coding agents feel hungrier than chat. Use the VRAM calculator with the context slider up before you promise a 32K repo chat on a 24 GB card.
| VRAM / unified | Coding model at Q4 | Expect |
|---|---|---|
| 6–12 GB | K2-Horizon-7B, 6.2 GB | Small edits. Not a Cloud Agent substitute. |
| 16–24 GB | Qwen3.8-27B 18.2 GB, K2-32B 21.2 GB, Muse Glimmer ~20 GB formula | The real local coding tier. 32B is tight with a long diff. |
| 48–64 GB and up | Same 32B with a long context, or a second model | Where “more than one agent” stops being a slogan. |
The coding-model guide is about which weights. This page is about where the agent process runs.
A local coding agent wants the Studio more than the mini. Mac Studio M5 Max 36 GB, ASIN B0HGKSQMX6, was $2,449 on 1 October 2026. On the PC side, a 24 GB card is the discrete match; an RTX 4090 listing we already use is B0BG94PS2F. A 16 GB 5080-class card does not become a 32B machine because the bandwidth is newer. Fit is gigabytes.
Mac Studio M5 Max 36 GB on Amazon
ASIN B0HGKSQMX6. Amazon Associates link. The live price is on that page, not locked in here.
ASIN B0BG94PS2F. Amazon Associates link. The live price is on that page, not locked in here.
A correction or a hardware question goes to the contact page.