Ask HN: How do you use local LLMs productively?

I've been periodically testing the strongest reported models as they come out, and which can fit on my 32GB M1 Max. I've yet to find one that I feel is genuinely useful.

My latest attempts were with 4 bit quants of Qwen 3.5, both 9b and 35B.

Both, on my very first query, something along the lines of "sup dog" or "how does beer a compare to beer b" led to an endless loop of thinking that I eventually had to manually stop in each case.

And yet I keep seeing passing comments about people using local LLMs to be productive.

Just curious what your strategies are, what the usecases are, and anything I may be missing.