Local vs Cloud

Decision

Use this guide when choosing local vs cloud. Neither option is universally superior; choose per workload and keep an escape path.

Choose Local

Local execution improves data locality and offline control when configured capacity is sufficient.

Choose Cloud

Cloud execution provides broader frontier capability and elastic capacity under approved provider contracts.

Material tradeoffs

• Validate actual local model quality, hardware capacity, and patch ownership.
• Validate cloud region, retention, support access, egress, and provider terms.

Validate the choice

• Test both paths on the same representative set.
• Compare quality, latency, cost, security, and operability.
• Document the decision, evidence window, review date, and rollback.