OpenCode – Open source AI coding agent • Hacker News Board

Re: OpenCode – Open source AI coding agent

#281

Post by __mharrison__ » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 5:29 AM UTC

cyanydeez wrote: post #68

__mharrison__ wrote: post #30

This replaced Aider for me a couple months back. I use it with Qwen 3.5 running locally when my daily limits run out on my other subscriptions. The harness is great. Local models are just slow enough that the subscription models are easier to use. For most of my tasks these days, the model's capability is sufficient; it is just not as snappy.

I'm curious: I'venever touched cloud models beyond a few seconds. I run a AMD395+ with the new qwen coder. Is there any intelligence difference, or is it just speed and context? At 128GB, it takes quite awhile before getting context wall.

There's a difference in intelligence. However for 90% of what I'm doing I don't really need it. The online models are just faster.

I just did a one hour vibe session today, ripping out a library dependency and replacing it with another and pushing the library to pypi. I should take my task list and let the local model replicate the work and see how it works out.

Re: OpenCode – Open source AI coding agent

#282

Post by bakugo » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 5:32 AM UTC

adithyassekhar wrote: post #270

logicprog wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's true at all. As I said, in a response to another person blaming it on agentic coding above, there are a very large number of ways to use coding agents to make your programs faster, more efficient, more reliable, and more refined that also benefit from agents making the code writing research, data piping, and refactoring process quicker and less exhausting. For instance, by helping you set up test…

You're both right. AI can be used to do either fast releases or well designed code. Don't say both, as you're not making time, you're moving time between those two. Which one you think companies prefer? Or if you're a consulting business, which one do you think your clients prefer?

> AI can be used to do either fast releases or well designed code

I have yet to actually see a single example of the latter, though. OpenCode isn't an isolated case - every project with heavy AI involvement that I've personally examined or used suffers from serious architectural issues, tons of obvious bugs and quirks, or both. And these are mostly independent open source projects, where corporate interests are (hopefully) not an influence.

I will continue to believe it's not actually possible until I am proven wrong with concrete examples. The incentives just aren't there. It's easy to say "just mindlessly follow X principle and your software will be good", where X is usually some variation of "just add more tests", "just add more agents", "just spend more time planning" etc. but I choose to believe that good software cannot be created without the involvement of someone who has a passion for writing good software - someone who wouldn't want to let an LLM do the job for them in the first place.

Re: OpenCode – Open source AI coding agent

#283

Post by fHr » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 5:32 AM UTC

logicprog wrote: post #107

OpenCode was the first open source agent I used, and my main workhorse after experimenting briefly with Claude Code and realizing the potential of agentic coding. Due to that, and because it's a popular an open source alternative, I want to be able to recommend it and be enthusiastic about it. The problem for me is that the development practices of the people that are working on it are suboptimal at best; they're con…

Rust > TS Codex > OpenCode

Re: OpenCode – Open source AI coding agent

#284

Post by edg5000 » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 5:37 AM UTC

fresh_broccoli wrote: post #116

solomatov wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does github copilot ToS allow this?

They officially support OpenCode: https://github.blog/changelog/2026-01-16-github-copilot-now-...

This is very interesting. This could allow custom harnesses to be used economically with Opus. Depending on the usage limits, this may be cheaper than their API.

Re: OpenCode – Open source AI coding agent

#285

Post by namlem » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 5:37 AM UTC

logicprog wrote: post #107

OpenCode was the first open source agent I used, and my main workhorse after experimenting briefly with Claude Code and realizing the potential of agentic coding. Due to that, and because it's a popular an open source alternative, I want to be able to recommend it and be enthusiastic about it. The problem for me is that the development practices of the people that are working on it are suboptimal at best; they're con…

How much of the development is being done by humans?

Re: OpenCode – Open source AI coding agent

#286

Post by helloplanets » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 5:40 AM UTC

brendanmc6 wrote: post #62

I’ve been extraordinarily productive with this, their $10 Go plan, and a rigorous spec-driven workflow. Haven’t touched Claude in 2 months. I sprinkle in some billed API usage to power my task-planner and reviewer subagents (both use GPT 5.4 now). The ability to switch models is very useful and a great learning experience. GLM, Kimi and their free models surprised me. Not the best, not perfect, but still very product…

> Moat seems to be shrinking fast.

It's been a moving target for years at this point.

Both open and closed source models have been getting better, but not sure if the open source models have really been closing the gap since DeepSeek R1.

But yes: If the top closed source models were to stop getting better today, it wouldn't take long for open source to catch up.

Re: OpenCode – Open source AI coding agent

#287

Post by scuff3d » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 5:44 AM UTC

cies wrote: post #267

scuff3d wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drives me nuts that we have TUIs written in friggin TS now. That being said, I do prefer OpenCode to Codex and Claude Code.

Why to you prefer? I have a different experience, and want to learn. (I'm also hating on TS/JS: but some day some AI will port it to Rust, right?)

The biggest reason is I don't like being locked into an ecosystem. I can use whatever I want with OpenCode, not so much with Codex and Claude Code. Right now I'm only using GPT with it, but I like the option.

CC I have the least experience with. It just seemed buggy and unpolished to me. Codex was fine, but there was something about it that just didn't feel right. It seemed fined for code tasks but just as often I want to do research or discuss the code base, and for whatever reason I seemed to get terse less useful answers using Codex even when it's backed by the same model.

OpenCode works well, I haven't had any issues with bugs or things breaking, and it just felt comfortable to use right from the jump.

Re: OpenCode – Open source AI coding agent

#288

Post by systima » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 5:48 AM UTC

james2doyle wrote: post #110

systima wrote: post #108

Open Code has been the backbone of our entire operation (we used Claude Code before it, and Cursor before that). Hugely grateful for what they do.

What caused the switch? Also, are you still trying to use Claude models in OpenCode?

Yes I regularly plan in Opus 4.6 and execute in “lesser” models ie MiniMax

Re: OpenCode – Open source AI coding agent

#289

Post by nomel » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 6:00 AM UTC

stavros wrote: post #181

iAMkenough wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you got me thinking my electric company should start offering subscription tiers in these uncertain energy times...

Ours never will, they're a cartel, sadly. If you mean fixed subscription, next one is Netflix, I think, or my server provider at $40 or so.

My monthly "connection fee" is more than that (no solar, just EV). Your cartel needs to step it up!

For me it's $0.8/kWh during peak, $0.47 off peak, and super off peak of $0.15. I accidentally left a little mini 500W heater on all day, while I was out, costing > 5% of your whole month!

Re: OpenCode – Open source AI coding agent

#290

Post by the_black_hand » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 6:20 AM UTC

westoque wrote: post #128

logicprog wrote: post #107

OpenCode was the first open source agent I used, and my main workhorse after experimenting briefly with Claude Code and realizing the potential of agentic coding. Due to that, and because it's a popular an open source alternative, I want to be able to recommend it and be enthusiastic about it. The problem for me is that the development practices of the people that are working on it are suboptimal at best; they're con…

> The problem for me is that the development practices of the people that are working on it are suboptimal at best; they're constantly releasing at an extremely high cadence, where they don't even spend the time to test or fix things (or even build a proper list of changes for each release), and they add, remove, refine, change, fix, and break features constantly at that accelerated pace. this is what i notice with o…

It's understandable and even desirable that a new piece of code rapidly evolves as they iterate and fix bugs. I'd only be concerned if they keep this pattern for too long. In the early phases, I like keeping up with all the cutting edge developments. Projects where dev get afraid to ship because of breaking things end up becoming bloated with unnecessary backward compatibility.