The on-device angle is interesting for a reason nobody seems to be discussing: governance.
When agents run in the cloud, you can at least intercept and control their spending at the network layer. When they run on-device (like Ferret-UI Lite), that control surface disappears. The agent is making decisions locally, potentially triggering payments or API calls before any centralized policy can intervene.
This is especially relevant as x402 (HTTP-native payments) matures. If an on-device agent can see and interact with apps AND make micropayments autonomously, the spending control problem gets much harder.
We're going to need proxy-based or OS-level governance layers that sit between on-device agents and payment networks. The current approach of "just set a monthly budget" won't survive autonomous on-device agents.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 13.1 ms ] threadSurely APPLE would utilize these SOTA tools to improve things.
When agents run in the cloud, you can at least intercept and control their spending at the network layer. When they run on-device (like Ferret-UI Lite), that control surface disappears. The agent is making decisions locally, potentially triggering payments or API calls before any centralized policy can intervene.
This is especially relevant as x402 (HTTP-native payments) matures. If an on-device agent can see and interact with apps AND make micropayments autonomously, the spending control problem gets much harder.
We're going to need proxy-based or OS-level governance layers that sit between on-device agents and payment networks. The current approach of "just set a monthly budget" won't survive autonomous on-device agents.