Cloud agents are starting to make runtime handoff feel normal. You can send an agent to a cloud VM. It can keep working after your laptop closes. It can have a shell, files, an IDE, a browser, and enough continuity to finish a long task without you babysitting the process. That is a real improvement. But it exposes the next problem. A cloud browser is not the same as your browser. The moment the agent needs to operate inside a real logged-in account, the clean demo starts collecting sharp edges: SSO, 2FA, anti-bot checks, account-specific state, existing tabs, saved context, user consent, and audit expectations. Copying cookies into the cloud is the wrong default. Re-authenticating every time is brittle. Giving the agent credentials is worse. Desktop MCP solves one half of the problem Desktop and browser MCP setups have the opposite strength. They can inherit the browser session you already have.…