Techniques for apparent cloud access of a hosted content item. In one embodiment, for example, a method performed at a personal computing device executing a user agent comprises: receiving a block agent request for a content item from the user agent; determining content item block identifiers of content item blocks that make up the content item; determining which, if any, of the content item blocks that make up the content item are not stored in a local storage of the personal computing device; downloading, from a block server of an online content management system, any of the content item blocks that are not stored in a local storage of the personal computing device; and sending to the user agent, in a response to the block agent request, data of each of the content item blocks that make up the content item.