> Nobody in his right mind will...

let a few valley elites decide how humanity can use this technology

open and transparent is the way, China is showing how

I’m rooting for open models, but SOL 6.1 and Opus 5.5 are absolute workhorses on a $100/mo sub. I share your fears, though, and really hope an open model catches up and can somehow compete with the subscription prices of the big 2.

I have workhorse models, spend far less, the model matters less than people like to claim

there's no money long term in being a token vendor

The biggest revelation from using open weights, because the vendors offer most of them up, is how useful using multiple model families is. Regardless of open or closed, if you are only using one family like Ant or Oai models, you're leaving a lot on the table. A harness like OpenCode will enable you to use different models in one session, or more specifically different subtasks when doing long running teams.

That sounds interesting.

I spin up “offices” for different projects, using a documentation heavy approach with procedures, policies, standards, and processes. Agent onboarding and orientation, etc. I usually have an engineer for each separate part, (one for a simulator to simulate the hardware, one for the user application, one for the data analysis and evaluation tool, one for the firmware on each type of device, one for schematic and board reviews, etc. ) then I’ll have an office manager in charge of policy and issue boards, agent rosters, etc, and a engineering governance agent that makes sure code is compliant and documentation / code is coherent before any merges. 6-15 agents in each office depending on the complexity of the task.

It sounds like open code could be pretty handy but it would nerf my Claude subscription (api!=subscription rates). Understanding my workflow, what models do you think might be suitable for those tasks outside of OAI and Anthropic?

I've outlined the models I've used in a recent HN comment, check my history, and some spicy opinions too :]

I'd be remiss if I did not mention subscription plans like OpenCode Go, with generous quotas at $10/$40 month (you can have more than one), which is a way better deal than anything you'll find with Big Ai

> Nobody in his right mind will use

Nobody AMERICAN in his right mind will use... Wait, actually a lot of them will.

But for me, as a non american, non chinese person: I'll use whatever the fuck is the best and cheapest for my task, because that's how fucking Capitalism works.

If that means that a (proclaimed) "communist" country cleans the carpet with the self-proclaimed land of the free: so be it!

I'm American and use Chinese models. Anthropic and OpenAI can suck a fart out of my butt, open models and open harnesses are the only sane option.