mahmoud-almadi

Thanks for scheduling a demo! Looking forward to chatting soon.

You can definitely monitor this remotely by looking at the logs of the runs which includes screenshots, but we don't currently support live streaming of the desktop screen. Our customers usually do that via RDP which is usually straightforward.

Because our agent directly controls the keyboard, mouse, and display, it needs exclusive access (no concurrent users). Our customer typically run it on either a dedicated spare desktop at the client site or a dedicated cloud VM (managed by them or provisioned by us)

You make valid points. At the end of the day we're focused on delivering real value while taking every security precaution we can reasonably take and build new technology at the same time. Eventually as we grow we'll be able to do full self hosting for our customers and perhaps even spin up our own LLMs in our own servers. But until then, we can only do so much.

I appreciate your skepticism. At the end of the day we're focused on delivering real value while taking every security precaution we can reasonably take and build new technology at the same time. Eventually as we grow we'll be able to do full self hosting for our customers and perhaps even spin up our own LLMs in our own servers. But until then, we can only do so much.

Great point! The issue with hotkeys is a series of hardcoded keyboard shortcuts is likely to fail due to unexpected popups which are quite frequent. Cyberdesk can automate entire workflows with keyboard shortcuts only, and we typically push for that, but where it really shines is its ability to handle anomalous situations and ensure the workflow works every time. As for webapps, Cyberdesk is equipped to automate them just as much as it can automate desktop apps, and it's been performing just as well on web apps as it is on desktop apps. To our agent a webapp and a desktop app are the same thing. just a bunch of shapes and text on the screen. We just emphasize the legacy apps in our messaging because there's a strong need for that. Almost every customer we've talking to has tried RPA but to no avail

Not yet! Vision only has been doing pretty well so far, but we're definitely looking into that at some point. Thanks for the suggestion!

You are correct in that ByteDance did releas UI-TARS which sounds like a really good open source computer use model according to some articles I read. You could run that locally. We haven't tested it so I wouldn't know how it performs, but sounds like it's definitely worth exploring!

I don't know too much about training your own computer use model other than it would probably be a very hefty, very expensive task.

However, I believe ByteDance released UI-TARS which is an excellent open source computer use model according to some articles I read. You could run that locally. We haven't tested it so I wouldn't know how it performs, but sounds like it's definitely worth exploring!

These points you're making are excellent!

Self hosting is inevitably a part of our roadmap. Cyberdesk will have a future where we host our entire agentic framework on your own servers. AI models and the whole backend included.

I can totally see myself having the same preferences as you if I were you with regards to cost, privacy, and control.

The unique value in Cyberdesk lies beyond being a wrapper around a computer use AI model. Our intelligence caching is built on large evals that help us produce prompts that are highly reliable for the intelligent caching to work well in the first place. On top of that there are several tools that allow the agent to be useful (import/export files, failsafes, taking actions using data that was read during the same run). Rebuilding Cyberdesk, while possible, will require several weeks at the very least of very rapid iteration. So for a dev team that wants to build the best computer use agent in the world, I guess that's doable. But for a team trying to be the best "X" in their particular industry, it's probably going to be a time sink that will take away from their ability to compete well in their space, hence why Cyberdesk is a great choice for them.

I hope you keep an eye on what we're doing! I really like your insights here and I'm curious to see what you think as we evolve over the next months and years. Maybe when we do full self hosting you'll be a customer :)

Thanks! Really appreciate the awesome thoughts.

1) You're totally right about this problem! We handle this issue with intelligent caching and heavy prompt/context engineering. These measures have been controlling agent behavior pretty well.

2) The key to scaling is building a tool that developers can learn and pick up themselves and that's what we're seeing here. By understanding how to use the tools we built to control agent behavior, developers have been able to leverage our docs to achieve desirable behaviors from our computer use agents when using Cyberdesk.

3) Surely you're correct about cost here as well, but with well defined workflows this will only happen a minority of the times the agent runs.

4) Great point! The beauty of what computer use made possible is it can solve problems previously unsolved by RPA altogether. The TAM will increase significantly when computer use agents start working really well. We've already seen this with our customers: they're able to build automations with Cyberdesk that they weren't able to using RPA. So while the TAM might bleed some ERPs and legacy apps that will implement APIs, I think it's going to grow at a much faster rate than it will shrink.

Thanks for the breakdown Seth! We did indeed get their SOC 2 Type II reports and made sure they showed no significant security vulnerabilities that will impact our usage of their service.

Right now we are taking the policies we signed with our LLM vendors as a verification of a zero data retention policy. We did also get their SOC 2 Type II reports and they showed no significant security vulnerabilities that will impact our usage of their service. We're doing our best to deliver value while taking as many security precautions as possible: our own data retention policy, encrypting data at rest and in transit, row-level security, SOC 2 Type I and HIPAA compliance (in observation for Type II), secret managers. We have other measures we plan to take like de-identifying screenshots before sending them up. Would love to get your thoughts on any other security measures you would recommend!

Great point! Yes you are correct in that the actual "agent" lives in the cloud and its actions are executed by a proxy running on the desktop. Hopefully at some point we can set up a straightforward installation procedure to have the AI models running entirely on the desktop, but that's constrained by desktop specs for now. VMs and desktops with the specs to handle that would be prohibitively expensive for a lot of teams trying to build these automations.

sorry it came off that way! could you elaborate on that thought?

We haven't looked into this kind of approach yet, but definitely worthwhile to do at some point!

Good point. In a way we can verify to a customer that we have that policy set up with them by showing them the certificate. But you are correct in that we haven't gone as far as asking for proof from Anthropic or OpenAI on not retaining any of our data but what we did do is we got their SOC 2 Type II reports and they showed no significant security vulnerabilities that will impact our usage of their service. So now we have been operating under the assumption that they are honoring our signed agreement within the context of the SOC 2 Type II report we retrieved, and our customers have been okay with that. But we are definitely open to pursuing that kind of proof at some point.

Are you referring to the LLM being used or where the actions (click, type, etc) are being executed? The actual actions can be executed on any windows machine, so the actual execution can take place locally on your device. The LLMs we're using right now are cloud LLMs. We haven't done an LLM self hosting option yet. Can I ask what reservations you have about running in the cloud? We have zero-date retention signed with our LLM vendors, so none of the data getting sent to them ever gets retained.

We sign BAAs with all our healthcare customers + all our vendors. Currently using Claude computer-use. Zero-data retention signed with both Anthropic and OpenAI, so none of the information getting sent to their LLMs ever get retained