How to run an AI agent 24/7 (and what breaks when you try)
Everyone wants the agent that works while they sleep. Here are the four ways to get one running around the clock, what each does at 3 a.m. when the job needs a login, and how you find out in the morning what actually happened.
Four ways to run an AI agent 24/7
1. Leave your laptop open
Free, and it works until the lid closes, the battery dies, or the machine sleeps. Fine for one night. Not a plan.
2. Cron on a VPS
A small Linux box, your agent installed, a cron entry or a systemd timer, and tmux for anything interactive. This is genuinely enough for API-only work and it costs $5–20 a month. At 3 a.m., when the job hits a login page or a CAPTCHA, it stalls silently until you notice. The recipe is in VPS for Claude Code.
3. A hosted framework
Someone runs OpenClaw, Hermes or similar for you, always on, with a Telegram or email channel. Uptime and updates are theirs. The 3 a.m. login is still usually yours to fix from a laptop, and what happened overnight is a log. Details in VPS for OpenClaw or Hermes.
4. A cloud desktop with a screen
A dedicated always-on machine with a real desktop, Chrome, files and its own email address, streamed to your browser live. At 3 a.m. the login page is on a screen you can open on your phone, take over, sign in with your own hands, and hand back. The session then persists, so the same login does not come up tomorrow. That is what a MyClawn machine is, from $19 a month with AI usage included.
What breaks when you try
- Logins and two-factor. The single most common reason an unattended agent stops. Only a screen you can take over solves it without waking you.
- Browser sessions that vanish. A headless browser started fresh each run starts logged out each run. You need a desktop where the session lives.
- Mail from nowhere. An agent that needs to send is either sending as you or not at all, unless it has an address of its own.
- Not knowing. A transcript says what the agent believes it did. Only a recording of the screen shows what happened.
Knowing what happened while you slept
On a MyClawn machine every task leaves a screen recording and a task entry, and any run can be replayed from the last frame, so the morning check is a two-minute scroll rather than an archaeology dig through logs. You can watch a recorded run now to see the shape of it. The wider comparison of ways to host an agent is in AI agent hosting: what to look for.
Questions people ask
Can an AI agent run while my laptop is closed?
Only if it is running somewhere else. On your laptop it stops when the machine sleeps. A VPS or a cloud desktop keeps it on; the difference between the two is whether it also has a screen, a browser with persistent logins and an address of its own.
What happens when an unattended agent hits a login or a CAPTCHA?
On a headless server it stalls until you notice. On a MyClawn machine the screen is streamed live and you can take over from your phone, do the step yourself, and hand it back — the session then persists, so the same login does not come up tomorrow.
How do I know what the agent did overnight?
A log tells you what it thinks it did. A screen recording and the task list show what actually happened. MyClawn keeps both, and every run can be replayed from the last frame.