The overwhelming recommendation from the "Claws" community (the ecosystem coined by Karpathy, Feb 2026) is a dedicated Mac Mini. The M4 Mac Mini literally went into shortage at Apple due to AI agent setups.[1]
| Reason | Detail |
|---|---|
| Always-on by default | No lid-close sleep, no "battery optimization", no interruptions. The agent's value comes from persistence — heartbeat monitoring, cron jobs, proactive reminders. |
| Physical security boundary | "This box runs the assistant." If something goes wrong, shut it down without nuking your primary machine. Most cited reason in community discussions. |
| No resource contention | Agent containers competing with your work for RAM/CPU is a real annoyance, especially during builds or data processing. |
| Battery health | Running a MacBook plugged in 24/7 with continuous workloads degrades battery life. Mac Mini has no battery to degrade. |
| Thermal design | Mac Mini has active cooling designed for continuous use. MacBook thermal design prioritizes portability. |
| Cost | $599 one-time + ~$13/year electricity. No cloud bills. Pays for itself vs. any cloud compute within months. |
You mentioned having a second laptop. Here's the comparison:
| Factor | Second Laptop | Mac Mini M4 |
|---|---|---|
| Always-on reliability | Must prevent sleep (caffeinate, lid open or clamshell), risk of accidental sleep/restart | Designed for always-on, no sleep quirks |
| Battery degradation | Constant charge degrades battery | No battery |
| Thermals | Fan noise, potential throttling in clamshell mode | Active cooling, designed for continuous use |
| Form factor | Takes up desk space, needs lid open or external display | Compact, headless ($5 HDMI dummy plug) |
| Cost | $0 (already owned) | $599 |
| Remote access | Tailscale + SSH works | Tailscale + SSH works, plus Screen Sharing |
| Apple Container | Requires macOS Tahoe (16.0+) on Apple Silicon | Ships with latest macOS |
NanoClaw's /setup skill handles service registration automatically, but here's what happens under the hood:
NanoClaw generates a plist at ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.nanoclaw.plist with:
RunAtLoad: true — starts on bootKeepAlive: true — auto-restarts on crashlogs/nanoclaw.log and logs/nanoclaw.error.logpmset -c sleep 0 — disable sleep when plugged in (permanent)caffeinate -s — prevents sleep while on power (process-level)