Coding agents typically run as terminal tools or desktop apps, with the LLM tool loop and context living locally. That makes cloud management difficult. Stacklok, founded by Kubernetes co-creators Craig McLuckie and Joe Beda, is building Mecatl, an open source "cloud-native harness" that moves the locus of value from the desktop to the cloud.
Mecatl keeps the agent loop independent of the client, model provider, state store, and execution environment. Beda notes that desktop-first harnesses often run the loop, local execution, and session state inside one tightly coupled process. Mecatl instead treats the loop as a cloud application and separates sensitive operations like tool calling and bash, while moving session and memory data into manageable systems rather than JSONL files on disk.
The broader bet is enterprise governance. Beda likens future agent interactions to email: they belong to the enterprise and should be managed and governed centrally. McLuckie also frames Mecatl as a way to decouple enterprises from frontier labs and hyperscalers, much as Kubernetes decoupled workloads from specific cloud providers. The article notes that Stacklok pivoted from software supply chain security and raised a $17.5 million Series A in 2023.