Local Docker

Single-node execution platform that runs TAO jobs as named Docker containers on a Docker daemon. The daemon can be local to the agent host or remote through DOCKER_HOST=ssh://user@host / a Docker context. It is useful for development, debugging, small runs, and workflows where a local coding agent submits jobs to a remote GPU box.

Use local Docker when the data is local to the Docker host or accessible through mounted volumes/cloud credentials. Do not use it for remote cluster scheduling, multi-node training, or jobs that need SLURM queueing.

Use remote Docker when the agent is running on a workstation or laptop but the Docker daemon and GPUs are on another single GPU server. In remote Docker mode, all local filesystem paths in specs are interpreted on the remote Docker host, not on the agent machine.

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