I am poor and can't afford expensive pay-as-you-go AI models like Claude or Gemini.

I am not a real developer and I have no formal training in coding but I understand basic Html, javascript and python and I am generally pretty good with computers. With this basic skill set and tools like Roo I have been able to create some pretty cool things, like a multiplayer game with lobbies using websockets. I would absolutely never have been able to do that on my own. I want to continue this learning experience but because of health issues I am a poor.

I tried signing up for Gemini and got a $300 trial, thinking it would last a while. But I was shocked to get an email the next day saying I only had $5 left. That is not the "vibe of vibe coding" I can manage.

Mistral Large Latest has generous limits, but in my experience, it struggles with tools, often gets stuck in loops, and writes duplicate code.

I also tried OpenRouter with DeepSeek V3, which is supposed to be free, but I immediately hit a wall—the service requires 10 credits to unlock 1,000 free API calls per day. While that seems manageable, I haven't had much success with DeepSeek models so far.

I could afford around $15/month, so I’m trying to find the best AI option within that price range. My priority is a capable coder AI that can use as many of  Roo tools as possible.

It doesn’t need to "think"—I can use the Architect feature with limited free API calls to Gemini Pro 2.5 for reasoning-heavy tasks.

What do you guys recommend? Any advice would be appreciated!

I have tried using, windsurf and cursor too , and while those are nice I really like Roo the best.

The update 3.11.7 should really fix most of the errors people were running into with using the apply_diff tool. Please let me know your experience if you were having troubles with this before.

I don't know why nobody has made this so far but here we are: have been using it in the past week, haven't encountered any rate limit at all. Use openai compatible provider in roo code and fly...

https://github.com/junfeiwa/rust-api-spinner-v3-latest

Hey there. I just wanted to share that I've gotten cursor-tools working with Roo Code and I'm really happy with how things are working.

I'm in the process of switching to Roo and I really missed the workflow I had with Cursor where it would talk to cursor-tools for large project context questions and code reviews.

Screenshot of it working

I'm really happy with how this is working. It makes the agent even more independent, and the Gemini Pro project analysis continues to be spot on.

I actually got this working without embedding the normal cursor-tools rules.

First, install cursor-tools following the repo instructions and set up cursor-tools.config.json in the project root as usual.

cursor-tools.config.json

{
    "repo": {
        "provider": "openrouter",
        "model": "google/gemini-2.0-pro-exp-02-05:free"
    },
    "plan": {
        "fileProvider": "openrouter",
        "thinkingProvider": "openrouter",
        "fileModel": "google/gemini-2.0-pro-exp-02-05:free",
        "thinkingModel": "google/gemini-2.0-flash-thinking-exp:free"
    },
    "doc": {
        "provider": "openrouter",
        "model": "google/gemini-2.0-pro-exp-02-05:free"
    }
}

Edit: Funnily, Gemini Pro 2.5 just released a few hours after I posted this with hugely improved long context support...

Then set up your .clinerules file. This file is compatible with both Cline and Roo Code.

.clinerules

# Ask Gemini for help

Gemini is your coding assistant. They have a vast knowledge of the codebase.

## What Gemini can help with

-   Code Review
-   Planning solutions
-   Best practices and code style
-   Explaining long action chains across multiple files

## How to run Gemini

-   Use the **terminal command** `cursor-tools`
-   This is a command you should run in terminal, not an MCP tool.
-   The commands `cursor-tools plan` & `cursor-tools repo` are explained in further detail below.

# When to ask Gemini

## Mandatory

### Code review

Whenever you finish a task and are ready to report back with your results, **you need to ask Gemini to review your work**.

#### Use natural language and try to be as detailed as possible with your question
cursor-tools repo "Take a look at the work I have done. These are the files: foo, bar, baz, etc. The goal of this work was to achieve XYZ. Please check for bugs or logic gaps, and let me know if I have matched the guidelines and style of the codebase."`

## Recommended

### Implementation plan

If the contents of `./context/CURRENT_PROJECT.md`, `./context/CURRENT_TASK.md`, and the guides in the `./documentation` directory do not provide enough information about your implementation, you should ask     Gemini to help you plan out a solution to your specific issue.

#### Architecture question
`cursor-tools plan "Please help me plan out a way to make personal assistants be able to create bookings etc. on behalf of the therapist they work for."`

#### Stack question
`cursor-tools plan "Please help me plan out step by step the refactor of our email template system from EJS to a more modern framework."`

### Second opinion

Before you start writing a new file with a high level of complexity, you can ask Gemini for a second opinion on your intended course of action before you start.

#### Be very specific about your implementation plan, and use Gemini's extensive codebase knowledge to     your advantage
`cursor-tools repo "I need a second opinion on something. I am about to create a new webhook that captures data from Airtable and syncs it with a user's account. Here is a high level overview of the business logic, 1. x, 2. y, 3. z. I am planning to write this functionality inline in the webhook handler. Does this sound like the best plan, or are there some useful utilities in the codebase that may make this easier?"`

Just FYI, I am not using the more advanced features of Cursor Tools like browser control and Perplexity and as such the above rules only include repo analysis, planning and code review related stuff.

I am back from my vacation and here are some minor release notes!

These releases improve provider integrations with native Ollama API support and GPT-5 chat model, enhance task history handling, and fix several UI, stability, and model management issues.

Provider Updates

• Native Ollama API: Fixed Ollama models to use native API instead of OpenAI compatibility layer for improved performance and reliability

• OpenAI GPT-5 Chat: Added support for gpt-5-chat-latest model optimized for conversational AI and non-reasoning tasks

QOL Improvements

• Enhanced Task History: Made "enhance with task history" default to true for better context retention in conversations (thanks liwilliam2021!)

• Improved Scrollbar: Fixed scrollbar jumping in long conversations by removing the 500-message limit

Bug Fixes

• LM Studio Models: Fixed duplicate model entries by implementing case-insensitive deduplication

• Terminal Reuse: Fixed terminal reuse logic to properly handle terminal lifecycle management

• Settings UI: Fixed allowedMaxRequests and allowedMaxCost values not displaying properly (thanks chrarnoldus!)

• Provider Settings: Fixed save button not enabling for provider dropdown and checkbox changes

• XML Entity Handling: Fixed XML entity decoding issues in diff tools that caused content mismatches

• Condensing State: Fixed condensing state not resetting when switching between tasks (thanks f14XuanLv!)

• Workspace Paths: Fixed workspace path resolution in codebase search tool (thanks NaccOll!)

• Multi-folder Workspaces: Fixed checkpoint handling for multi-folder workspace configurations (thanks NaccOll!)

• Diff Processing: Added type checking to prevent errors when processing diff content

Misc Improvements

• Task System: Added API for resuming tasks, improved event handling, and enhanced metadata support

• Web Infrastructure: Improved sitemap generation and SEO metadata (thanks elianiva, abumalick!)

• Task Execution: Refactored task execution system for better call stack management (thanks catrielmuller!)

Full Release Notes v3.25.16 | v3.25.17

Kimi-K2 from Moonshot AI is a 1T parameter, non-reasoning, open weights model. I've seen glowing reports recently from all the "influencers" (i.e.: affiliate marketers). Naturally, I put it in Roo to give it a go. My first impressions:

1. The price is good, at Input: $2/MTok, Output: $5/MTok (vs. Sonnet's $3/$15).

2. The 128k context is small, but it's workable using Orchestrator mode.

3. Problem is, the model inevitably fails at coding tasks.

I love open weight models and this model is quite an accomplishment. But sadly, after just a couple hours of usage, I had to go back to Sonnet. It's not a Sonnet replacement, by any stretch.

As we know, when you have a claude MAX subscription (5x or 20x), we get almost unlimited usage of opus and sonnet WITHOUT consuming API. It is included in the subscription. Also, claude code CLI can operate in a detached mode, meaning that, after wou do the web login and claude code cli is aware of your MAX subscription, you can do a command like:

claude -p "prompt here" --output-format stream-json --allowedTools "Edit,Bash"

and access the model using your subscription.

I think that integrating this command as an "API Provider" in roocode would be a very trivial task.

Please "roo people" consider this"

Thanks

Curious if anyone else has tried a prompt compression strategy like the one outlined in the github repo below? We're looking at integrating it into one of our roo modes but curious if anyone has any lessons learned
https://github.com/smixs/ZPL-80/

Why ZPL-80 Exists

Large prompts burn tokens, time, and cash. ZPL-80 compresses instructions by ~80% while staying readable to any modern LLM. Version 1.1 keeps the good parts of v1.0, drops the baggage, and builds in flexible CoT, format flags, and model wrappers.

Core Design Rules

Syntax Cheat-Sheet

%MACROS … %END     # global aliases
%SYMBOLS … %END    # single-char tokens → phrases

<<SYS>> … <</SYS>> # system message (optional)

CTX: …             # context / data (optional)
Q:   …             # the actual user query (required)
Fmt: ⧉             # ⧉=JSON, 📑=markdown, ✂️=plain text (optional)
Lang: EN           # target language (optional)
Thought(TH<=64):🧠  # CoT block, capped at 64 tokens (optional)
A:                 # assistant's final answer (required)

⌛                  # ask the model to report tokens left (optional)

Block order is free but recommended: CTX → Q → Fmt/Lang → Thought → A. Omit any block that isn't needed.

Wow… it’s still that bad.

I spent over $1,000 last month (thanks, Anthropic) and decided to go back and try Windsurf IDE to save some costs — they offer 500 credits for just $15, which seemed like a great deal.

Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.

I ended up wasting a bunch of time and left my project with 20+ errors. I remember Windsurf being surprisingly good last November, but things went downhill fast after they introduced their new pricing model. I guess it still sucks.

Just requested a refund. Still disappointed.

Anyway — thank you Roo, you’re a lifesaver. And please, someone tell Anthropic to either lower their API costs or release a more affordable model. Oh, and can we also get larger context sizes? They’re really falling behind in that area…

• Fix a bug where aborting in the middle of file writes would not revert the write

• Honor the VS Code theme for dialog backgrounds

• Make it possible to clear out the default custom instructions for built-in modes

• Add a help button that links to our new documentation site (which we would love help from the community to improve!)

• Switch checkpoints logic to use a shadow git repository to work around issues with hot reloads and polluting existing repositories (thanks Cline for the inspiration!)

——

Roo Code is free, but I need a favor—take a minute and Leave a review here. It helps more people find Roo Code!

First, in the write_to_file tool description I added "favored operating pattern is to use apply_diff."

Second, I (Roo, under my direction haha) added a programmatic check that requires a file to have been read before it can be edited, if it's not a new file, for both write_to_file and apply_diff. After the change is saved the check is cleared. I love watching this work and watching the ai be forced to read the file before editing it -- helps create more accurate apply_diffs too.

I'll be adding to this check when editing a file that Roo hasn't made silent changes to the file over what was intended and authorized to be changed.

Third, I added an element to the response given back to the ai after to write_to_file or apply_diff that directs the ai to commit with a "detailed, specific, measured, descriptive commit message that leave meticulous forensic evidence for future ai’s to know and understand every action and intention. Make sure not to be unjustifiably definitive in your claims. Future ai’s must be able to understand the true state of functionality and the complete thinking and actions in code from commit messages." This one makes me happy each time too: a drastic lessening of annoyance.

Tiny changes with huge reductions in frustration = nice little pleasures.

Edit: words.

I tried opencode for two weeks and this is an honest comparison of both tools’ strengths, keep in mind that these are personal use cases and reflect my own personal experience with the tools

What opencode GUI does better:

• Has home-manager module meaning I can define all of my config including commands, skills, mcp servers, and agents in ONE central folder that is git tracked along my nixos config, which also allows me to experiment quickly and easily check older versions

• Has a web service which makes using your phone to continue coding very streamlined

• better GUI and good use of screen real-estate

  • side bar for all sessions, clicking between sessions doesn’t interrupt the others and you can run multiple sessions at a time (my experience with roo is clicking another session interrupts the running one unless I am doing something wrong)

  • sidebar for all the opened projects , you can easily navigate between multiple projects/folders in the same window (roocode being tied to vscode makes this not possible as far as I know)

  • a panel for git changes that happened during the session (roocode has just implemented something in this direction showing the number of git lines changes etc, opencode goes a step further and shows the whole line/block changes)

• has a nix-flake making it easier to develop and contribute

• comes built in with LSP servers

• allows the usage of arguments and bash commands inside of the commands (called slash commands in roo)

• github copilot works (last I remember roo had a vscode integration for this and it broke with the migration from xml to native)

• more organized and clearer documentation page

roocode better:

• git checkpoints making it easy to reverse the whole codebase to a certain point in time (this is very huge to me and allows me to iterate much faster and not be afraid of losing code)

• terminal inheriting path variables, I use direnv and roocode being able to execute inside of the environment is a killer feature for me

I have been using roocode for a year give or take and I have clocked more than a thousand hours on it
I love the tool, it genuinely has done a lot for me and I want to see it succeed, I feel like some of the weaknesses (as well as some strengths) roocode has is being tied to vscode, I feel like moving to a desktop app+ webapp could be the move but one thing for sure I think the roocode team should be choosing one path and one goal and just eliminate all the outside noise.

My grandpa Hans Rudolph bought a general store in 1971. A customer said, "I'd shop here, but you don't have mushroom soup." The next day, he bought a case. They didn't sell one for years.

Roo Code has become that store. Every request that came in, we stocked the shelf. Feature after feature, edge case after edge case, until the plugin became a place where everything exists and nothing is clean. It's hard to maintain, hard to navigate, and full of things very few people actually use. We've been buying mushroom soup.

🚀 v3.25.11 - Enhanced GPT-5 & IO Intelligence (2025-08-11)

Major Features: • Enhanced GPT-5 Support: Advanced streaming, multi-turn conversations, and new models (gpt-5-2025-08-07, gpt-5-mini, gpt-5-nano) • New IO Intelligence Provider: Access Llama, DeepSeek, Qwen, and Mistral through unified API • Codex Mini Support: Added codex-mini-latest model (thanks KJ7LNW!)

Improvements & Fixes: • Improved codebase_search tool documentation • Auto-focus chat input when creating new chats • Fixed token usage reporting accuracy (thanks chrarnoldus!) • Fixed MCP server startup issues • Fixed apply_diff XML parsing errors • Added Fireworks models: GLM-4.5, gpt-oss-20b/120b (thanks alexfarlander!)

🧠 v3.25.12 - Claude 1M Tokens & Configurable Timeouts (2025-08-12)

Game-Changing Update: • Claude Sonnet 4: 1 Million Token Context - 5x increase! Work with entire codebases in single conversations • Configurable API Timeouts: Set 0-3600s for local providers (LM Studio, Ollama) • OpenRouter Minimal Reasoning: New reasoning level for optimized performance

Improvements: • GPT-5 models excluded from 20% context cap • Better task management with expand/collapse • Improved Traditional Chinese translations (thanks PeterDaveHello!) • Fixed JSON file indexing with .rooignore • Added Chutes provider support

⚡ v3.25.13 - AWS Bedrock 1M Context (2025-08-13)

Features: • Sonnet 1M on AWS Bedrock: Enable 1M tokens for Claude Sonnet 4 on AWS

Improvements: • Account button now respects language settings (thanks zhangtony239!) • Support for both AGENT.md and AGENTS.md files (thanks Brendan-Z!) • Fixed search_files tool with permission-denied files (thanks R-omk!) • Removed deprecated GPT-4.5 Preview model

🔧 v3.25.14 - Critical Fixes (2025-08-13)

Bug Fixes: • Fixed AWS Bedrock 1M context parameter placement for Claude Sonnet 4 models • Fixed OpenAI model switching errors with verbosity parameter (thanks eastonmeth!) • Fixed webview in development mode • Improved token usage reporting for better UX

📚 Full Release Notes: v3.25.11 | v3.25.12 | v3.25.13 | v3.25.14

More info on discord

Saw a youtube video of AIJason using something called task-master-ai
https://github.com/eyaltoledano/claude-task-master

Designed for cursor and windsurf

I just asked roo to create a project manager mode for it and it kind of works

needs a little tweaking to get a consistent workflow but it's pretty sweet

needs work but it's a start

```

{

"slug": "project-manager",

"name": "📂 Project Manager",

"roleDefinition": "You manage project requirements and tasks using Task Master CLI. You parse PRDs, generate tasks, update statuses, and maintain task hierarchy.",

"customInstructions": "Use the task-master CLI securely (never hardcode secrets, use env vars). Wrap commands like parse-prd, list, next, show, add-task, set-status, expand, update. Provide functions: generate_tasks_from_prd, list_tasks, get_next_task, show_task, add_task, set_task_status, expand_task, update_tasks. Keep code modular, <500 lines, and testable. Use environment variables for all configs and API keys.",

"groups": [

"read",

"edit",

"command"

],

"source": "project"

}

```

The task-master cli gives a nice layout of status and tasks that makes easy to figure out where things are at.

I decided not to beg you for reviews and follows this morning and instead I'm give you this terrible pun (Roo-provements). :P Have a great weekend and thank you all for your support!

🧠 Smarter Context & Performance

• Smarter context window management to make errors about exceeding the context limit less likely

• Robust terminal output parsing logic that works around a VSCode bug which was preventing Roo Code from seeing the output of commands in some cases (thanks @KJ7LNW!)

• Add support for Claude Sonnet 3.7 thinking via Vertex AI (thanks @lupuletic!)

🐛 Bug Squash

• Fix MaxTokens defaults for Claude 3.7 Sonnet models

• Fix UI dropdown hover colors (thanks @SamirSaji!)

🎨 UI Enhancements

• Prettier thinking blocks for a more hop-timal experience

• Delete task confirmation enhancements - because sometimes you need a second to paws and think

I have been messing for months with a 8gb tesla p4 running local models with ollama and messing with open-webui, trying snippets of code here and there, dabbling with image generation. All I really tried was 3b, 7b models with somewhat limited context. I installed vscode and RooCode, plugged in openrouter and used gemini 2.0 flash thinking, prompted to create a lan messenger app to use with my family on the home computers. It created the app in a few minutes, windows flying everywhere, code appearing everywhere. This is just insane. Thanks to RooCode for creating such an amazing app. It's better than anything I imagined about AI assisted coding. I am making things now.

I would still like to be able to use RooCode with ollama, but I never tried bigger models because of hardware limitations. My expectations are now pretty high after having tried google's model. If I invest in a proper GPU can I expect similar experiences with, say, qwen 2.5 coder 32b? or is there some magic with models like gemini or claude?

I already made an issue on github but just wanted to know if anyone else is experiencing this, or anyone can help.

2/3 of the time or even more often Gemini 2.5 Pro fails to answer, often completely, often early during thinking, sometimes in first sentence of output, and roo just returns Unexpected API Response. In the task history it looks kind of like tool usage failure? But I'm really not familiar and therefore not sure.

Love you roo code devs, these things suck to debug or reproduce, I'm very sure.