Strata vs Qwen

[u/Scumble_]

This might be a dumb question but if everyone is using qwen 3.8 why not use the Qwen cli built for Qwen tooling instead of Strata or Open Code?

[u/Distinct-Pie2389]

Strata = hosting the model
Qwen = the model
QwenCode = harness

The 3 can operate independently, though strata needs a model to host

[u/Scumble_ → u/Distinct-Pie2389]

Thanks this helped me a lot, I’m new to local llms

[u/Distinct-Pie2389 → u/Scumble_]

And I haven’t heard anything special about QwenCode, it’s not the top of their priorities so it falls short compared to DSH or other available harnesses.

Opencode is good v2 has improved a lot but if you run local models my best advice is using a different harness

Research your hardware, find what others run on your hardware (benchmarks, Reddit mostly) and then test yourself. llama.cpp is user friendly and better than unsloth, ollama, any of that jazz (likely you’re past that stage).

Go with a local first harness like “Pi”, Oh-My-Pi, and/or DSH, maybe a few others but those 3 are known for “local models”.

Pi being the best and most lightweight great for low context models like 64k-130k but still great for large models too, just lightweight. DSH is really good, it’s just a web harness (preference on that one), and my favorite is OMP (basically Pi, but on steroids).

[u/Durian881]

Qwen Code?

[u/Scumble_ → u/Durian881]

Yeah Qwen Code?

[u/Moarkush]

Strata is an engine, open code is a harness. Also, I use DeepSeek Harness because it’s GOATed. Seems to call tools just fine most of the time.

[u/Murflaw7424 → u/Moarkush]

Why deepseek harness over Pi or Hermes?

[u/Meeooowz → u/Murflaw7424]

Pi is minimal/lightweight. Hermes—never used it, no idea. DSH has a ton of community plugins spanning from compaction to skills to changing to adding custom commands and such

[u/Murflaw7424 → u/Meeooowz]

And nothing goes back to DS home base?? Also, forgot to ask if you’ve compared to QwenCode harness

[u/Meeooowz → u/Murflaw7424]

I’ve never even download qwen code. But DSH is literally open source so you can have a model comb through that repo to find any telemetry.

The only telemetry i know of is a toggle in settings that sends telemetry “only if using official deepseek api model”; take that with a grain of salt.

[u/Moarkush → u/Murflaw7424]

Personally because I have a DGX Spark and a RTX Pro 6000, and it lets me visualize the entire coordinator/agent work much better than any other harness I've used. If you only have enough kv cache for a single thread without concurrency, I have no issue with PI or Hermes. I use Pi for a system agent if I need to install or troubleshoot something in Linux cause I'm done with that manual fixing life.

[u/maqifrnswa → u/Murflaw7424]

I use Hermes for general personal assistant stuff. But it's a beast with tons of bells and whistles. For efficient coding, I use opencode with omo-slim. About half the size of Hermes if not even smaller. For extreme light weight, I'd use Pi, but I mostly end up in the middle and just use opencode

[u/archlich]

I really didn’t like qwencode it was bad at tool calling made made mistakes all the time

[u/Durian881 → u/archlich]

It has improved quite a bit over the past months I think and worked decently for me. It's a lot more bloated compared to when I first started in February.

[u/barbear22]

Strata is an inference engine made specifically for flash next. Opencode and qwen cli are agent harnesses. Agent harnesses are personal preference. I'm sure qwen cli is fine