What does local first mean in this context? Does it just mean local? Like, the software runs locally?

yeah, it just means everything runs on your machine. there are services like E2B, sprites.dev and others that give you sandboxes in the cloud. shuru runs VMs locally using Apple's Virtualization.framework, so nothing leaves your Mac.

Unfortunately yes. It's just another stupid marketing buzzword these days.

it's the other way around, everything is in the cloud now (upload your files to us, we are privacy respecting, bla bla)

So it's good that the product actually highlights it is dealing with local hardware only.

I don't expect "Linux MicroVMs for macOS" to have anything to do with clouds.