How it works
RunStead is in development. This page describes how it is designed to work. It is not a description of a shipped service, and details may change before the pilot.
Connect your own Mac
You install a small connector on a Mac you own and pair it with your account. You approve the pairing yourself, and you choose which project folders it may work in, read-only or read-write.
Tasks run on that Mac with the official, unmodified Claude Code or Codex command-line tools. The web console and the phone show you what is happening; the work itself stays on your machine.
You can remove a folder, or the whole Mac, at any time. Once you do, no new work is accepted for it.
Sessions belong to people
Every member has an individual account and separate permissions to run work. Each agent session belongs to the member who started it, and only that member can control it.
Teammates can view and comment on the sessions and deliverables a member chooses to share. Sharing a session does not share your model account, your machine, or your spending.
Two ways to handle model credentials
Your own credentials
You sign in to Claude Code or Codex yourself, in your own terminal, with your own account or API key. Those credentials stay on your Mac. RunStead never asks you to type them into the web console. If they expire, the task waits until you sign in again.
A licensed platform API
Where it is offered, you can instead use a commercial model API that RunStead is licensed to provide. The platform keeps its own provider credentials on the server side. You get access scoped to your project, model, and budget, never the provider's keys.
The two modes keep credentials separate, and RunStead does not switch between them on its own. Changing modes is always a deliberate choice.
Built to recover, not to guess
Long agent tasks meet sleeping laptops and dropped connections. When RunStead cannot confirm how a task ended, it is designed to say so and ask you, rather than guess or quietly run the task a second time.
We will write about the engineering behind this on the blog.
Planned: hosting your own Mac
Some people travel or spend time away from their desk, and want help when their machine needs attention while they are gone. Hosting a customer-owned Mac is a direction on our roadmap for them.
It is planned, not available. Scope, supported regions, and terms have not been decided, and we will only describe it in more detail once they are.
Who can use it
RunStead is intended for people and teams who meet applicable legal, regional, sanctions, and AI provider eligibility requirements. Each person's use of a model provider must also comply with that provider's own terms. Supported tools and availability will depend on your region and on provider policies.