The "Staging" Dilemma

It’s a classic DevOps headache.

You have a staging environment. It's perfect. It mirrors production. But it's locked behind a corporate firewall or running on a private VPC.

You want to use SiteSnapshot to monitor it visually before pushing to production. But you can't.

The bad solutions starts piling up:

• "Let's whitelist SiteSnapshot's IPs!" (Security team says NO).
• "Let's use ngrok!" (Unstable URLs, security risk).
• "Let's just test in production." (We all know how that ends).

This friction is why we built Agent Mode.

What is Agent Mode?

Agent Mode allows you to run a lightweight, secure binary on your private infrastructure (or even your laptop) that polls SiteSnapshot for jobs.

Instead of our cloud servers trying to reach in to your network (which requires open ports), your Agent reaches out to us to ask for work.

It's a one-way outgoing connection.

• No open ports.
• No firewall holes.
• No public IP required.

Why Use It?

1. Monitor Localhost

Developing a new feature? Run the agent on your machine. You can now set up a SiteSnapshot monitor for http://localhost:3000. Even if you change your code, SiteSnapshot will capture the regression on your local machine instantly.

2. Secure Internal Dashboards

Have an internal Admin Panel that manages critical user data? You can't expose it to the web. With Agent Mode, you can monitor your internal http://admin.internal dashboard related to uptime and visual regressions securely.

3. Staging/QA Environments

Catch bugs before they hit production. Integrate Agent Mode into your CI/CD pipeline or persistent staging server.

How to Get Started

It takes less than 30 seconds to connect your first agent.

1. Go to Dashboard > Agents.
2. Click "Generate New Key".
3. Download or copy the run command.
4. Run it on your server:

   ./sitesnapshot-agent start --key=sk_agent_12345...

Once connected, you'll see the Agent status turn Online in your dashboard. You can now create Monitors that target your private URLs.

Security First

We designed this for Enterprise environments.

• Encrypted: All communication is over TLS 1.3.
• Ephemeral: No data is stored on the agent.
• Scoped: Agents only execute read-only rendering tasks.

Conclusion

Your monitoring shouldn't stop at the firewall. Extend your visibility into localhost, staging, and your private intranet today with Agent Mode.