Factory released a native desktop application for its autonomous AI agents on April 8, available on macOS and Windows. The app, called Droid, gives agents a dedicated interface with persistent machines, computer use capabilities, multi-agent concurrent sessions, and AI-native visualizations, according to Factory’s announcement.
Persistent Machines
Each Droid gets a persistent compute environment that survives between sessions. Installed packages, cloned repos, credentials, and running services carry forward. Factory offers two options: Cloud Computers, which are managed machines provisioned through the app with SSH access and instant resume, and BYO Machine, which turns existing hardware into a Droid Computer with a single registration command, the announcement detailed.
For teams in regulated industries, Factory supports fully air-gapped deployment. A registered machine with a GPU can run entirely on local models through Ollama, vLLM, or compatible endpoints. No data leaves the network, Factory stated.
Computer Use
The desktop app gives agents the ability to control other applications directly. A Droid can open a staging environment in a browser, click through a user flow, report failures, switch to VS Code, run extension commands, read output, and act on it. It can pull data from spreadsheets, draft decks, or update design files, according to the announcement.
This is a departure from the sandboxed text generation typical of most agent tools. The agent operates the computer the way a human developer would.
Multi-Agent Sessions
The desktop app is built for running multiple Droids simultaneously. Each session lives in the sidebar with its own context, progress, and history. Start one Droid on a feature build, kick off another on a migration, and check in on either without losing context, Factory noted.
Adoption Data
Factory reported that enterprise teams adopt Droids 2x faster when both CLI and desktop interfaces are available. Users who work across both run 4.6x more sessions than CLI-only users, according to the announcement.
The desktop app also opens Factory to non-engineering roles. “When your AEs are using Droids to prep deal summaries and your PMs are drafting specs, the value proposition stops being about engineering productivity and starts being about organizational leverage,” Factory stated.
Beyond the Terminal
The release includes VS Code integration, mobile support for checking session progress from phones and tablets, and Factory’s full plugin ecosystem including MCP, skills, and hooks. The app is available across all Factory plans with usage included in existing subscriptions, per the announcement.
The move signals a broader trend: agents are graduating from CLIs and web dashboards to native desktop applications. Cursor 3 shipped a similar agents-first desktop interface this week, and Genspark released AI Workspace 4.0 with desktop integration. The pattern suggests the industry is converging on a view that persistent, multi-agent workflows need purpose-built interfaces rather than chat windows or terminal sessions.