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A guide to local coding models

aiforswes.com

321–330 of 363 posts

Re: A guide to local coding models

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LMStudio is so much better than Ollama it's silly it's not more popular.

LMStudio is not open source though, ollama is but people should use llama.cpp instead

Note that there's also "LlamaBarn" (macOS app): https://github.com/ggml-org/LlamaBarn

Re: A guide to local coding models

#322
post #232
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claude Code is a lot about prompting and orchestration of the conversation. The LLM is just a tool in these agentic frameworks. Whats truly ingenious is how context is engineered/managed, how is the code-RAG approached, and them LLM memory that is used. So my guess would be - we need open conversation or something along the line of "useful linguistic-AI approaches for combing and grooming code"

Agreed. I've been trying to use opencode and crush, and none of them do anything useful for me. In contrast, claude code "just works" and does genuinely useful work. And it's not just because of the specific LLM used, it's the overall engineering of the tool, the prompt behind the scenes, etc. But the bottom line is that I still can't find a way to use either local LLMs and/or opencode and crush for coding.

Search for "Claude Code Router" on GitHub, which you can use to route any models through Claude Code.

Re: A guide to local coding models

#323
post #4

> I realized I looked at this more from the angle of a hobbiest paying for these coding tools. Someone doing little side projects—not someone in a production setting. I did this because I see a lot of people signing up for $100/mo or $200/mo coding subscriptions for personal projects when they likely don’t need to. Are people really doing that? If that's you, know that you can get a LONG way on the $20/month plans fr…

I use local models + openrouter free ones. My monthly spend on ai models is I'm not cheap, just ahead of the curve. With the collapse in inference cost, everything will be this eventually I'll basically do $ man tool | or even $ cat source | Things I used to do intensively I now do lazily. I've even made a IEITYuan/Yuan-embedding-2.0-en database of my manpages with chroma and then I can just ask my local documentatio…

this is the extent to what I use any LLM - they're really good at looking up just about anything, in natural language, and most of the time even the first hit, without reprompting, is a pretty decent answer. I used to have to sort thru things to get there, so there's definitely an upside to LLMs in this manner.

Re: A guide to local coding models

#324

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> If that's you, know that you can get a LONG way on the $20/month plans from OpenAI and Anthropic. > The time to cough up $100 or $200/month is when you've exhausted your $20/month quota and you are frustrated at getting cut off. At that point you should be able to make a responsible decision by yourself. These are the same people, by and large. What I have seen is users who purely vibe code everything and run into…

I've been a software developer for 25 years, and 30ish years in the industry, and have been programming my whole life. I worked at Google for 10 of those years. I work in C++ and Rust. I know how to write code. I don't pay $100 to "vibe code" and "learn to program" or "avoid learning to program." I pay $100 so I can get my personal (open source) projects done faster and more completely without having to hire people w…

Well you did hire some(thing)...for $100/month.

Re: A guide to local coding models

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To use up the Pro tier plan you must close the loop so to speak - so that Codex knows how to test the quality of its output and incrementally inch toward its goals. This can be harder or easier depending on your project. You should also queue up many "continue ur work" type messages.

I’m actively doing that for a fun side project - systematically rewriting SQLite in Rust. The goal is to preserve 100% compatibility, quirks and all. First I got it to run the native test harness, and now it’s basically doing TDD by itself. Have to say, with regular check-ins, it works quite well. Note: I’m using the $20 plan for this! With codex-5.2-medium most of the time (previously codex-5.1-max-medium). For my w…

I use 3-6 Codex agents in parallel within the same project

Re: A guide to local coding models

#326
A Mac dev type using a 5-year-old machine, I will believe it when I see it. I know a few older Macs still kicking around, but those people use them for basic stuff, not actual work. Mac people jump to new models faster than Taco Bell leaves my body.

Re: A guide to local coding models

#327
The work and interest in local coding models reminds me of the early 3D printer community, whatever is possible may take more than average tinkering until someone makes it a lot more possible.

Re: A guide to local coding models

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m actively doing that for a fun side project - systematically rewriting SQLite in Rust. The goal is to preserve 100% compatibility, quirks and all. First I got it to run the native test harness, and now it’s basically doing TDD by itself. Have to say, with regular check-ins, it works quite well. Note: I’m using the $20 plan for this! With codex-5.2-medium most of the time (previously codex-5.1-max-medium). For my w…

I use 3-6 Codex agents in parallel within the same project

That is a good use-case as well and would definitely require a codex Pro subscription.

I've been doing something like this with the basic Gemini subscription using Antigravity. I end up hitting the Gemini 3 Pro High quota many times but then I can still use Claude Opus 4.5 on it!

Re: A guide to local coding models

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use 3-6 Codex agents in parallel within the same project

That is a good use-case as well and would definitely require a codex Pro subscription. I've been doing something like this with the basic Gemini subscription using Antigravity. I end up hitting the Gemini 3 Pro High quota many times but then I can still use Claude Opus 4.5 on it!

I like Pro also for better access to 5.2 Pro which is indispensable for some problems and for producing specs/code samples. I use https://gitingest.com

Re: A guide to local coding models

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for Codex. Not even for Gemini/Antigravity! I am truly shocked by how much mileage I can get out of them. I recently bought the $200/mo OpenAI subscription but could barely use 10% of it. Now for over a month, I use codex for at least 2 hrs every day and have yet to reach the quota. With Gemini/Antigravity, there’s the added benefit of switching to Claude Code Opus 4.5 once you hit your Gemini quota, and Google i…

> I recently bought the $200/mo OpenAI subscription but could barely use 10% of it This entire comment is confusing. Why are you buying the $200/month plan if you’re only using 10% of it? I rotate providers. My comment above applies to all of them. It really depends on the work you’re doing and the codebase. There are tasks where I can get decent results and barely make the usage bar move. There are other tasks where…

> I rotate providers. My comment above applies to all of them. It really depends on the work you’re doing and the codebase. There are tasks where I can get decent results and barely make the usage bar move. There are other tasks where I’ve seen the usage bar jump over 20% for the session before I get any usable responses back. It really depends.

Ah, I missed this part. Yes, this is basically what I would recommend today as well. Buy a couple of different frontier model provider basic subscriptions. See which works better on what problems. For me, I use them all. For someone else it might be codex alone. Ymmv but totally worth exploring!

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