There's been a little confusion in my group, and I've finally decided to ask here. Do you need to be running a program on your commlink for an agent to be able to load it? And once the agent has the program in its payload, does it still count toward your commlink's processor limit? Or does it only count toward the processor limit of the node the agent is on?

Programs count against both the agents payload limit, and for the system load modifier of the node running the agent. Note that an agent running inside your persona can freely adjust the program load as needed, and that even independant agents can do that, IF they have an online source for programs, AND are scripted to do so.
(Warning: Don´t put the program server for the later trick inside your home. Security spiders ain´t stupid.)

Then how do the IC suites from Unwired work? It seems to imply that each IC program counts as running itself plus all its loaded programs for the purposes of Response reduction.

That is what I said - the programs are loaded into the IC (and count for payload), but also count for response reduction.

System Load: agent/IC + agent/IC programs + other programs => minimum agent payload +1
Agent/IC Payload: agent/IC programs

Note the "ergonomic" software option, which is not available for the agent itself.



Now for those activities that are not time-critical, you can give an agent the option of loading programs from a specific node (those inside your persona can load all programs on your commlink). The swap operation costs minor bits of time (unload simple, load complex), but the agent does not have to run as many programs.