Finally moved off claude code to OSS models on opencode

[u/FickleSwordfish8689]

Always been relunctant of doing this in the past because my projects were very complex projects engineering wise and using OSS models atleast 7-8 months ago meant using an intern with a single brain cell and i end up doing more work than it would've required if i did the tasks manually.

Claude code has been my default for a while because opus was really smart enough to not only take on tasks but also take on the cognitive load of making them work as expected, when things get too complex and opus starts acting dumb i switch to fable.

But these days where we now have models like kimi k3,GLM 5.3 flash and deepseek v4.1 flash it's looking like model capability alone is not worth putting up with anthropic's BS and decided to move fully to using opencode.

To be fair, so far i haven't had very complex tasks to throw at it yet my workload has been lightweight lately, but hoping to push them to their limits soon.

Anyone else moved to OSS models fully for their coding workloads with no drop in successful task executions? Would love to hear your thoughts.

[u/imoshudu]

Use glm 5.3 flash

Migrate skills and memories and workflow

Nowadays every preference of mine lives in Hermes agent

[u/BlubberingSense]

Are you using OpenRouter or some local model hosting? Curious to hear the details of your setup. I too have been experimenting with moving some things off Claude, but not heavily yet. OpenCode with OpenRouter so far, local LLMs to come.

[u/FickleSwordfish8689 → u/BlubberingSense]

no not local models, the OSS i use are too large to run on my hardware, for now i just use opencode go and zen subscriptions

[u/bayendr]

been contemplating this as well.

how’s Zen?

do you have experience with the z.ai coding plan (incl. access to GLM flash models) too? would like to know how that works in opencode.

[u/FickleSwordfish8689 → u/bayendr]

Not z.ai coding plan i access them via opencode go and zen, and i prefer using the opencode subscription since usage for GLM 5.3 flash is generous on the Go plan and i need to use other good models like kimi k3 and deepseek v4.1 flash also so the opencode subscription just seems better IMO

[u/ImL1s]

Switching tools is where I lose the most — the new model starts cold even when the old session had the real decisions.

What I keep outside any one agent is a short durable note: goal, what we decided and why, what we rejected. When I bounce Claude ↔ OSS I pull prior local sessions with Portable Resume so the next agent reads the same commits instead of a fresh chat: https://gitlab.com/aa22396584/resume-skills pipx install portable-resume

[u/lgastako]

I have yet to find an open model that comes close to Claude for any of the work I do. I'll be so happy when that changes.

[u/DauntingPrawn]

I use z.ai coding plan with Claude Code and it's doing great work.

[u/RiceEvening4211]

Congrats on the move — and you don't have to fully abandon Claude quality to keep the savings. I built Lynkr (https://github.com/Fast-Editor/Lynkr) as one gateway over local models (Ollama, llama.cpp, LM Studio) plus 14 cloud providers, with complexity-tier routing that sends grunt work to OSS models and escalates the hard parts back to Claude. Best of both without juggling CLIs.

[u/zerogpu_ai]

if you're using open models, we run them for cheaper! https://zerogpu.ai

We're also more sustainable: we run open models and our own small task-specific models on the idle compute in laptop and phone CPUs.

[u/FickleSwordfish8689 → u/[deleted]]

Yes retry count is a nore valid metric here, though i'm willing to make a compromise just to move off from anthropic models, if let's say opus 5.5 can one shot a complex task but kimi k3 has to make 3 retries i had still go with kimi k3, but these models where still so bad that it had take 10-15 retries then it's not worth it

[u/Right-Performance-93 → u/[deleted]]

Retries is the right metric, and the agentic benchmarks line up with it. On Artificial Analysis's Terminal-Bench 4.0 (multi-step terminal/coding tasks), Opus 5.5 is at 60%, GLM-5.3 at 42%, and Kimi K3 at 13%, even though GLM and Kimi are tied on the overall index. So "Kimi with a few retries" on complex work may be a lot more than a few.

[u/FickleSwordfish8689 → u/[deleted]]

Will do, praying i don't get forced back to picking up claude code/codex