I agree with the sentiment but I also recommend you build a local only agent. Something that runs on llama.cpp or vllm, whatever... This way you can better grasp the more fundamental nature of what LLM's really are and how they work under the hood. That experience will also make you realize how much control you are giving up when using cloud based api providers like OpenAI and why so mane engineers feel that LLM's are a "black box". Well duh buddy you been working with apis this whole time, of course you wont understand much working just with that.