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Ask HN: Has anyone replaced Claude/GPT with a local model for daily coding?

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Re: Ask HN: Has anyone replaced Claude/GPT with a local model for daily coding?

#111

Post by jmorgan »

dheera wrote: post #70
pierotofy wrote: post #36

Yes. Llama.cpp + Qwen3.6-35b (MTP) + OpenCode is quite capable and runs on a single RTX 3090 and is faster than most cloud models. Quality is like running edge models from 8-12 months ago. Setup details at https://github.com/pierotofy/LocalCodingLLM/

Am I doing something wrong or has ollama become shittified? I'm looking at https://ollama.com/search and the top few models like kimi-k2.7-code say "cloud" and I can't seem to ollama pull them. I thought the whole POINT of ollama was not-cloud?

The larger models are available on Ollama's cloud as most folks don't have the hardware to run 500B-1T parameter models.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone replaced Claude/GPT with a local model for daily coding?

#112

Post by Greenpants »

I have! I care about data privacy and LLMs being free. I'm using the Pi coding harness but containerized and sandboxed, to make sure it's running completely offline. On my Mac Studio with 128GB RAM (or MacBook with 36GB RAM) I'm using Qwen3.6 35b, with only 3b active parameters so that it runs really fast. I've done a complete redesign for my website's homepage and blog with Django + Wagtail. The latter is interesting, because Wagtail is a bit less well-known, so the agent, without giving it internet access, doesn't always know how to develop for Wagtail. I've used Qwen3.5 122b for when things get more complex. At 10b active parameters, it's significantly slower though.

I've noticed a few things compared to large models like Claude. For starters, you really need to know what you're asking, and be precise; it doesn't do much thinking for you. Any assumptions left open, and it'll take the easiest route to reach the goal (e.g. CSS in HTML), often not the best in terms of architecture.

It gets into loops quite often, and surprisingly often gets the edit tool call wrong, after which it will spend lots of thinking tokens and re-read files instead of retrying (despite the system prompt suggesting so).

Comparing agentic Qwen3.6 35b to Claude Opus is like a junior with knowledge across the board, that you really need to guide, versus a senior that thinks with you on architecture. If Opus gives a 15x speedup, local and fully offline Qwen gives a 5x speedup. Which, given that it's completely free, is still mind-boggling to me :)

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone replaced Claude/GPT with a local model for daily coding?

#113

Post by sakopov »

codinhood wrote: post #26

I don't think you're going to get many "true" answers to this. The opportunity cost of not using the latest and best models is just too much right now. Every month I research this and come to the same conclusion: the time, effort, and cost required to get local models (and the coding tools around them) to perform even close to Claude Code with sonnet/opus just not worth it right now. If it was, it would be distributi…

This seems to be the answer. Building a rig with a decent graphics card will cost $2k+ and will produce sub-par results. Might as well milk the $100/m Claude sub until open-source alternatives reach parity with today's frontier models.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone replaced Claude/GPT with a local model for daily coding?

#114

Post by freetonik »

rootlocus wrote: post #100
horsawlarway wrote: post #49

For personal use, yes. I replaced a $100/m subscription to claude in favor of running pi harness pointed at unsloth studio, using both qwen (unsloth/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-MTP-GGUF) and gemma (unsloth/gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-GGUF) models, depending on my mood. I have a machine I built about 5 years ago with dual RTX3090s in it (I was going to build a new gaming machine anyways, and the llama release had just dropped so I tacked…

2x RTX3090 are around $4400. Without any electricity costs or other parts, that's 3.6 years of $100/m claude.

That's also years of top tier PC gaming, if you're into that.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone replaced Claude/GPT with a local model for daily coding?

#115

Post by major505 »

Yes. I use Owen on my MacBook m1 (16gb) daily, running inside Ollama. Works well. Is not particularly fast, and I need to create a custom imagem that sets the temperature of the model to zero starting, so I don't get over creative with its bullshit, but it works reasonable week.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone replaced Claude/GPT with a local model for daily coding?

#116

Post by heipei »

bluejay2387 wrote: post #68

About 90% of my coding is on Qwen 3.6 27b and Open Code with some custom skills and Semble. It is NOT as smart as CC or Codex but its enough to get most of my work done. I didn't set out to replace CC and Codex (I have an RTX 6000 so the TPS is faster than I care about, but the RTX 6000 was originally for other work). I only tried this just to see how close you could get to a frontier model for coding as an experimen…

Same here, I use Qwen 3.6 27b (Q6 quant) with llama.cpp on an RTX 5090 using the pi agent exclusively now. The fact that it's local means that I never have to think about token pricing, quotas, time of day, or data sensitivity. I have limited the GPU from 600W to 450W which means the system stays whisper quiet during inference.

I have become so "lazy" (in a good way), so far that I've started using the model for lots of daily mundane things on top of just coding:

  * "commit this on a branch, push, create a PR and assign $nickname for review"
  * "Use the Stripe CLI to download all open and overdue invoices and reconcile them with this CSV export from our bank account."
  * "Use these Elasticsearch credentials to summarise what kind of operations are causing load at the moment."
  * "Tell me if our codebase already supports X and where it's  implemented."

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone replaced Claude/GPT with a local model for daily coding?

#117

Post by anana_ »

manmal wrote: post #106
stymaar wrote: post #50

Yes, Qwen3.6-35B-A3B on a Strix Halo 128GB (Bosgame M5). I have way too much VRAM forme such a model but Qwen never released the 122B version of Qwen3.6, which is the best class of model for my hardware. But at the same time my electricity bill is negligible, this is originally a laptop chip and it shows, it consumes almost nothing while idle and a little above 120W during prompt processing. And Qwen3.6 has been surp…

Have you tried the 27B dense version? It’s way better for coding.

Unfortunately on Strix Halo or any similar unified memory set up, dense models are gonna be dirt slow due to the tiny memory bandwidth... But I agree, 27B is superior.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone replaced Claude/GPT with a local model for daily coding?

#120

Post by dnautics »

sbrother wrote: post #81
jacobgold wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Quality is like running edge models from 8-12 months ago." That sounds great for hobbyists but IMHO it wasn't until Opus 4.6 was released six months go (Dec 25, 2025) that we had a model good enough for professionals to use as a primary driver of their coding agents. That seems to be the threshold worth aiming for.

I strongly agree on that being the release where these tools got good enough to substantially speed up my professional work. I have to admit I was super skeptical of AI coding until then.

for me (might be because of the language im using) i had a substantial bump around september and a huge bump around January.

in my stuff now i use an OT library that claude put finishing touches on in September.

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