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Ask HN: Who uses open LLMs and coding assistants locally? Share setup and laptop

326 points threeturn | 1 comments | 31 Oct 25 13:39 UTC | HN request time: 0.2s | source

Dear Hackers, I’m interested in your real-world workflows for using open-source LLMs and open-source coding assistants on your laptop (not just cloud/enterprise SaaS). Specifically:

Which model(s) are you running (e.g., Ollama, LM Studio, or others) and which open-source coding assistant/integration (for example, a VS Code plugin) you’re using?

What laptop hardware do you have (CPU, GPU/NPU, memory, whether discrete GPU or integrated, OS) and how it performs for your workflow?

What kinds of tasks you use it for (code completion, refactoring, debugging, code review) and how reliable it is (what works well / where it falls short).

I'm conducting my own investigation, which I will be happy to share as well when over.

Thanks! Andrea.

1. j45 ◴[31 Oct 25 16:00 UTC] No.45773580[source]▶
The M2/3/4 Max CPUs in a Mac Studio or Macbook Pro when paired with enough ram are quite capable.

In more cases than expected, the M1/M2 Ultras are still quite capable, especially performance power per watt of electricity, as well as ability to serve one user.

The Mac Studio has better bang for the buck than the laptop for computational power to price.

Depending on your needs, the M5's might be worth waiting for, but M2 Max onward are quite capable with enough ram. Even the M1 Max continues to be a workhorse.