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Ask HN: What's Your Useful Local LLM Stack?

91 points Olshansky | 1 comments | 15 Jul 25 15:17 UTC | HN request time: 0.208s | source

What I’m asking HN:

What does your actually useful local LLM stack look like?

I’m looking for something that provides you with real value — not just a sexy demo.

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After a recent internet outage, I realized I need a local LLM setup as a backup — not just for experimentation and fun.

My daily (remote) LLM stack:

  - Claude Max ($100/mo): My go-to for pair programming. Heavy user of both the Claude web and desktop clients.

  - Windsurf Pro ($15/mo): Love the multi-line autocomplete and how it uses clipboard/context awareness.

  - ChatGPT Plus ($20/mo): My rubber duck, editor, and ideation partner. I use it for everything except code.
Here’s what I’ve cobbled together for my local stack so far:

Tools

  - Ollama: for running models locally

  - Aider: Claude-code-style CLI interface

  - VSCode w/ continue.dev extension: local chat & autocomplete
Models

  - Chat: llama3.1:latest

  - Autocomplete: Qwen2.5 Coder 1.5B

  - Coding/Editing: deepseek-coder-v2:16b
Things I’m not worried about:

  - CPU/Memory (running on an M1 MacBook)

  - Cost (within reason)

  - Data privacy / being trained on (not trying to start a philosophical debate here)
I am worried about:

  - Actual usefulness (i.e. “vibes”)

  - Ease of use (tools that fit with my muscle memory)

  - Correctness (not benchmarks)

  - Latency & speed
Right now: I’ve got it working. I could make a slick demo. But it’s not actually useful yet.

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Who I am

  - CTO of a small startup (5 amazing engineers)

  - 20 years of coding (since I was 13)

  - Ex-big tech
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quxbar ◴[15 Jul 25 16:24 UTC] No.44572836[source]▶
IMO you're better off investing in tooling that works with or without LLMs: - extremely clean, succinct code - autogenerated interfaces from openAPI spec - exhaustive e2e testing

Once that is set up, you can treat your agents like (sleep-deprived) junior devs.

replies(2): >>44573217 #>>44591747 #
1. caleblloyd ◴[17 Jul 25 10:39 UTC] No.44591747[source]▶
Been using gRPC with json transcoding to REST on a greenfield project. All auto generated clients across 3 languages. Added frontend wrapper to pre-flight auth requests so it can dynamically display what users are allowed to do.

Claude Code has been an absolute beast when I tell it to study examples of existing APIs and create new ones, ignoring bringing any generated code into context.