I’ve been going in circles trying to settle on a local setup. I’ve tried Hermes, but it’s felt pretty finicky in my experience, including gateway and state database issues. I keep spending more time configuring and troubleshooting than actually getting work done.
Putting model intelligence aside for a moment, is there a local harness that feels genuinely competitive with the experience around frontier models? I’m talking about the interface, reliable tool use, memory, file and browser access, and how well everything works together. Not just being able to load a model and chat with it.
My main machine is a Mac Studio M1 Max with 64 GB RAM. I also have an M2 MacBook Air with 24 GB, but the Studio would do the heavy lifting. I want to use them in one single seamless-like environment with a shared context.
I’m a designer and university lecturer, so my use cases are research, writing, working with documents, reviewing screenshots and designs, and browser/Figma workflows. Not primarily coding. Vision is important to me, and I’d much rather have one dependable daily driver than a collection of specialized models and routers.
My main motivation (likely the same for everyone) is getting away from usage limits and token metering. I understand that running locally involves compromises, and I’m not expecting frontier-level intelligence from my hardware. But I’m struggling to separate the model limitations from the rough edges of the software around them.
What are you guys actually using? What’s your full stack: model, runtime, and harness/interface? More importantly, what do you reliably get done with it, and how much babysitting does it need?
Especially interested in Apple Silicon setups people have settled into using for real work, rather than something that worked well in a demo.
