Copy the folder, have the site
A loam site is a folder. Copy it and you have the site — the same engine renders it on a server, on a laptop or in a throwaway test. The same files render the same everywhere.
Nothing points at the machine
Nothing in a loam site knows the machine it happens to run on. Where the install stands — its address, which PHP runs it — is read from a handful of environment keys when it starts, never written into the site. The engine works out its own root from its position, so a copy runs before anyone has configured it.
The engine sits beside your site
The engine lives in one folder, .loam/, next to yours, and knows nothing about your site in particular. An update swaps parts of that folder and touches nothing of your content. What you have keeps working — offline, without a check, for as long as you like. A licence buys the stream of updates, never a dependency: lose access and you keep a working site, not a broken one.
A mirror is the whole site
The git mirror of your site is not a backup that needs a restore procedure — it is the site. A local copy is not an export — it is the site. No database means no schema to migrate, no plugin tables to reconcile, no cache to warm. Moving a site is moving its files and pointing a domain at them.
Loam, elsewhere
That is also why there is no separate desktop product. Bedrock ships the same engine, byte for byte, and points it at a copy of your files on your own machine: a layer below draft where you can build and experiment with nothing at stake. What comes back travels through the site's MCP and is judged like any other change. Not a desktop version of loam — just loam, elsewhere.