Launch and go. Work across providers. Manage the edges.

Each agent runs inside a tmux session. tmux owns the long-running terminal process, not the browser. Closing the browser disconnects the view; it does not close the agent. As long as the Ronin machine and its tmux server remain running, the sessions continue there.

The browser reconnects to those same sessions. It does not start a replacement session in the browser and it does not move the terminal to a Ronin server.

Ronin is reachable only while its host is on and an address to that host is reachable. A desktop must stay on, a laptop must stay awake, and a continuously running server or virtual machine provides continuous availability.

How tmux keeps sessions running →

A cloud virtual machine gives terminal agents an always-on Linux host for their repositories, tools, and persistent sessions. The agent models still run with their own providers, so a normal x86 VM with enough RAM is usually more useful than a GPU server.

You can use Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Akamai Cloud, Vultr, or another provider. The practical questions are how much memory the team needs, how you connect privately, and how the sessions survive after your laptop closes.

How to run an AI agent team on a VM →

By default Ronin binds to the machine's Tailscale address. If Tailscale is absent, it falls back to the local machine only. It does not expose Ronin Cowork to the public internet by default.

Tailscale is the security wall. You can open Ronin Cowork from any device on your Tailscale network without exposing it to the public internet or adding another Ronin login. If you choose to expose Ronin more broadly, it requires a password or passkey.

Set up Tailscale →

Locked mode is the default and comes standard with Ronin Cowork.

In locked mode, the browser tile is attached directly to the tmux terminal through a WebSocket. Terminal output is rendered by the terminal emulator, and keyboard, pointer, and scroll input are sent back to that live terminal.

That directness has a consequence people do not expect: terminal scroll is terminal input. Scrolling from a phone or laptop changes the live terminal's screen and scrollback on the remote machine. The browser is operating a terminal that may be a thousand miles away; it is not independently scrolling a web document.

Because locked mode repaints a live remote terminal, it can feel noticeably laggy on a slower connection.

Unlocked mode is a beta Ronin Services capability and is not generally available yet.

Unlocked mode does not attach a second terminal client. Ronin's record service reads the session tape, reconstructs the settled output into a scroll, and renders that stream to a plain scrollable browser view. Input still goes back to the active tmux pane, but reading and scrolling no longer drive the terminal's own viewport.

This makes the recorded view behave more like people expect a browser to behave:

• Scroll through earlier output without moving the live terminal screen.
• Read over a higher-latency connection without repainting a remote terminal for every movement.
• Use the session more comfortably on a phone.
• Preserve a transcript beyond the terminal's current visible scrollback.
• Keep readable terminal history beyond the current scrollback.

The unlocked transcript is reconstructed from terminal output. Terminal applications can repaint and overwrite their screen, so the recorded view folds those updates into readable text rather than claiming to be a pixel-perfect recording of every historical screen.

If the record service is not installed or available, the unlocked view is off and Ronin Cowork falls back to the locked live terminal.

Ronin Cowork does not send the project workspace to an external Ronin surface. The agent CLIs still communicate with their own model providers, just as they do when run without Ronin.

If you opt into Ronin Services, you may choose to share anonymous operating measurements through Ronin's single outbound channel. The file and receipt stay on your machine. It excludes project files, code, prompts, terminal output, and transcripts. Declining sends nothing.