Described is a system, method, and computer-implemented apparatus for deploying and updating toolkits in hybrid cloud-local development platforms. In one embodiment, a cloud based software development environment is connected with a local development environment, enabling the cloud based software development environment (cloud environment) to inquire into the toolkit versions installed on the local machine. Once missing or incompatible versions of toolkits are identified, the cloud environment uses the connector module to instruct the local machine to download and install the appropriate toolkit version. The connector may use any types of bi-directional communication channels, such as a browser plugin, a web server hosted on the local machine, web services, or the like.