←back to thread

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

326 points threeturn | 2 comments | 31 Oct 25 13:39 UTC | HN request time: 0.018s | 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.

Show context
vinhnx ◴[31 Oct 25 16:42 UTC] No.45774009[source]▶
> 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?

Open-source coding assistant: VT Code (my own coding agent -- github.com/vinhnx/vtcode) Model: gpt-oss-120b remote hosted via Ollama cloud experimental

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

Macbook Pro M1

> 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).

All agentic coding workflow (debug, refactor, refine and testing sandbox execution). VT Code is currently in preview and being active developed, but currently it is mostly stable.

replies(1): >>45774089 #
jdthedisciple ◴[31 Oct 25 16:49 UTC] No.45774089[source]▶
Wait ollama cloud has a free tier?

Sounds too good. Where's the catch? And is it private?

replies(2): >>45774248 #>>45777510 #
bradfa ◴[31 Oct 25 17:05 UTC] No.45774248[source]▶
The catch is ollama cloud is likely to increase prices and/or decrease usage limit levels soon. Free tier has more restrictions than their $20/mo tier. They claim to not store anything (https://ollama.com/cloud) but you'll have to clarify what you mean by "private" (your model likely runs on shared hardware with other users).
replies(1): >>45777517 #
1. vinhnx ◴[31 Oct 25 22:43 UTC] No.45777517[source]▶
I agree. "Free" usage could mean tradeoff. But for side-project and experiments, to accesss open source model like gpt-oss, as my machine can not run, I think I will accept it.
replies(1): >>45778189 #
2. bradfa ◴[01 Nov 25 00:28 UTC] No.45778189[source]▶
My experience with the free tier and qwen3-coder cloud is the hourly limit gets you about 250k tokens input and then your usage is paused till the hour is up. Enough to try something very small.