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How I code with AI on a budget/free

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Re: How I code with AI on a budget/free

#101

Post by wat10000 »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #48
unnouinceput wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, Google is definitely the champion of respecting your privacy. Will definitely not train their model on your data if you pay them. I mean you should definitely just film yourself and give them everything, access to your files, phone records, even bank accounts. Just make sure to pay them those measly $200 and absolutely they will not share that data with anybody.

You're thinking of Facebook. A lot of companies run on Gmail and Google Docs (easy to verify with `dig MX [bigco].com`), and they would not if Google shared that data with anybody.

Big companies can negotiate their own terms and enforce them with meaningful legal action.

Re: How I code with AI on a budget/free

#102

Post by lern_too_spel »

d1sxeyes wrote: post #60
lern_too_spel wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're thinking of Facebook. A lot of companies run on Gmail and Google Docs (easy to verify with `dig MX [bigco].com`), and they would not if Google shared that data with anybody.

It’s not really in either Meta or Google’s interests to share that data. What they do is to build super detailed profiles of you and what you’re likely to click on, so they can charge more money for ad impressions.

Meta certainly shares the data internally. https://www.techradar.com/computing/cyber-security/facebooks...

Re: How I code with AI on a budget/free

#103

Post by dist-epoch »

radio879 wrote: post #98
hpincket wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am developing the same opinion. I want something fast and dependable. Getting into a flow state is important to me, and I just can't do that when I'm waiting for an agentic coding assistant to terminate. I'm also interested in smaller models for their speed. That, or a provider like Cerebras. Then, if you narrow the problem domain you can increase the dependability. I am curious to hear more about your "surgical" t…

well, most of the time, I just dump the entire codebase in if the context window is big and its a good model. But there are plenty of times when I need to block one folder in a repo or disable a few files because the files might "nudge" it in a wrong direction. The surgical context tool (aicodeprep-gui) - there are at least 30 similar tools but most (if not all) are CLI only/no UI. I like UIs, I work faster with them…

Thanks for the article. I'm also doing a similar thing, here are my tips:

- https://chutes.ai - 200 requests per day if you deposit (one-time) $5 for top open weights models - GLM, Qwen, ...

- https://github.com/marketplace/models/ - around 10 requests per day to o3, ... if you have the $10 GitHub Copilot subsciption

- https://ferdium.org - I open all the LLM webapps here as separate "apps", my one place to go to talk with LLMs, without mixing it with regular browsing

- https://www.cherry-ai.com - chat API frontend, you can use it instead of the default webpages for services which give you free API access - Google, OpenRouter, Chutes, Github Models, Pollinations, ...

I really recommend trying a chat API frontend, it really simplifies talking with multiple models from various providers in a unified way and managing those conversations, exporting to markdown, ...

Re: How I code with AI on a budget/free

#104

Post by ireadmevs »

sumedh wrote: post #89
hgarg wrote: post #50

Just use Rovodev CLI. Gives you 20 million tokens for free per 24 hours and you can switch between sonnet 4 / gpt-5.

What is the catch?

> Beta technology disclaimer > Rovo Dev in the CLI is a beta product under active development. We can only support a certain number of users without affecting the top-notch quality and user experience we are known for providing. Once we reach this limit, we will create a waiting list and continue to onboard users as we increase capacity. This product is available for free while in beta.

From https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Rovo-for-Software-Tea...

Re: How I code with AI on a budget/free

#105

Post by radio879 »

worik wrote: post #85

A lot of work to evaluate these models. Thank you

I don't like or love many things in life, but something about AI triggered that natural passion I had when I was first learning to code as a kid. Its just super fun. Coding without AI stopped being fun looong time ago. Unlucky brain or genetics maybe. AI sped up the dopamine feedback iteration loop to where my brain can really feel it again. I can get an idea in my head and just an hour later, have it 80% done and functioning. That gives me motivation, I won't get bored of the idea before I write the code.. which is what would happen a lot. Halfway done, get bored, then don't wanna continue.. AI fixed that

Re: How I code with AI on a budget/free

#106

Post by barrell »

can16358p wrote: post #81
teiferer wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can code for free this way vs > If you set your account's data settings to allow OpenAI to use your data for model training So, it's not "for free".

Many folks, especially if they are into getting things free, don't really care much about privacy narrative. So yes, it is free.

Plenty of people can also afford to subscribe to these without any issue. They don’t even know the price, they probably won’t even cancel it when they stop using it as they might not even realize they have a subscription.

By your logic, are the paid plans not sometimes free?

Re: How I code with AI on a budget/free

#107

Post by chazhaz »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #45
joshdavham wrote: post #40

> When you use AI in web chat's (the chat interfaces like AI Studio, ChatGPT, Openrouter, instead of thru an IDE or agent framework) are almost always better at solving problems, and coming up with solutions compared to the agents like Cline, Trae, Copilot.. Not always, but usually. I completely agree with this! While I understand that it looks a little awkward to copy and paste your code out of your IDE and into a w…

100% opposite experience. Whether agentic, not… it’s all about context. Either agentic with access to your whole project, “lives” in GitHub, a fine tune, or RAG, or whatever… having access to all of the context drastically reduces hallucinations. There is a big difference between “write x” and “write x for me in my style, with all y dependencies, and considering all z code that exists around it”. I’m honestly not und…

Agreed that it’s all about context — but my experience is that pasting into web chat allows me to manage context much more than if I drop the whole project/whole filesystem into context. With the latter approach the results tend to be hit-and-miss as the model tries to guess what’s right. All about context!

Re: How I code with AI on a budget/free

#109

Post by astrobe_ »

can16358p wrote: post #81
teiferer wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can code for free this way vs > If you set your account's data settings to allow OpenAI to use your data for model training So, it's not "for free".

Many folks, especially if they are into getting things free, don't really care much about privacy narrative. So yes, it is free.

Sophistry. "many" according to which statistic? And just because some people consider that a trade is very favorable for them, doesn't it is not a trade and it doesn't mean they are correct - who's so naïve they can beat business people at their own game?

Re: How I code with AI on a budget/free

#110

Post by precompute »

I only use LLMs as a substitute for stackexchange, and sometimes to write boilerplate code. The free chat provided by deepseek works very well for me, and I've never encountered any usage limits. V3 / R1 are mostly sufficient. When I need something better (not very often), I use Claude's free tier.

If you really need another model / a custom interface, it's better to use openrouter: deposit $10 and you get 1000 free queries/day across all free models. That $10 will be good for a few months, at the very least.

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