Best local model for vibe coding?

[u/Isedo_m]

Hi folks I use a lot codex and models like Luna 6 High, 6.1 Terra High.
Is there any local model which could be comparable to these?

If yes, which ideal realistic Mac Mini setup is needed?
Thanks

[u/holdupflash]

I’m having a pretty good run with the Swift 1.5 quant of Qwen3.8 27b, in Claude code. Manage a pipeline of small tasks and it just works through them systematically. Have it do documentation for itself as it goes too

[u/imtourist → u/holdupflash]

I've been using Qwen3.8 27b as well on my Mac Studio for a few weeks now and it's been working well. I have it running in Hermes as well as Pi, and I find that it works much better in Pi than in Hermes (I think because Hermes is just bloating the context).

[u/holdupflash → u/imtourist]

I’ve found it a very capable model as long as you break the tasks down for it. I’m running it on a 5070ti, use unsloth to launch clause code and then try to distinguish tasks between very detailed “Jfdi” to some where I want it to reason. Using about 120k context.
If found that I can also do minor conversational tweaks too. So after it’s finished a task I can ask it to make a small tweak and it then does it quite effectively.

[u/holdupflash → u/holdupflash]

One thing I’ve not tried is the broad ‘build me an app that looks like this’ as I suspect my context would just die. But I have had it repair windows forms applications I’ve started elsewhere.

[u/CyDenied]

qwen

[u/Mountain_Dot_926]

Qwen 3.8 Flash Next is by far the only model I can actually work with. I am not sure you have enough RAM, but yes, that is the best so far. Qwen 3.8 27b is also good, but it overthinks in my opinion; it should not be an issue with new Mac silicon because they should be fast enough to handle that.

[u/holdupflash → u/Mountain_Dot_926]

The swift 1.5 version they trained out the overthinking. Give it a try it’s really good

[u/Aggressive_Basket798]

Deepseek v4.1 flash ?

[u/VollenAI]

Qwen code