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Comment by lambda | Hacker News Reader

Why do you need them to provide a coding agent? Just use their model with any off the shelf coding agent. I happen to prefer Pi, but use whatever works for you.

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Yeah, I'm using Pi with their models through an OpenCode Go subscription and it works pretty well. 10 bucks and V4-Flash is virtually infinite.

I probably have an unfounded assumption that whatever coding agent they make will work really well with their models, better than external harnesses. I don't have a good sense for how all the model + harness combinations compare, nor any good way to compare them myself, but generally believe model companies train their models to work best with their own harness.

I've noticed that models have gotten less finicky with this over time. Harnesses don't need to be complex to get good coding performance from models, they just need to implement some sane primitives for code exploration and editing.

It is in the model's provider's interest for you to believe this because they get to lock you into their harness and inference. As models get better they will get better at using any harness, it comes down to how well the harness is actually engineered. I highly recommend you take an hour or two and check out Pi to either solidify or change your assumption. The harness is essentially just another developer tool and can be as opinionated, overly-engineered, minimal as anything else. I would think for DeepSeek, especially, they're efforts are much better spent researching how to make their LLM's better instead of working on engineering a harness that might get some marginal gain building it for their models.

Edit: here is a really good twitter thread about this exact topic: https://xcancel.com/kunchenguid/status/2057700714626105412

What's the best way to use it with Pi, OpenRouter?

I only use local models myself personally. But yeah, OpenRouter would probably be a good option.

> What's the best way to use it with Pi, OpenRouter?

I can't claim it's "the best"...

But the Pi.dev and OpenRouter combo is what I'm doing at home, and I love it. Setup was easy, I can use /model to switch between any of the openrouter models and whatever I'm hosting locally via VLLM.

Open router is a 5% tax? If you use it seriously may as well skip it

I don't have an LLM-positive culture at work. I'm on a bit of an island. Or under a rock.

Anyhow, I'm pulling myself up by my own bootstraps.

For me a 5% overhead is fine... if it gives me better visibility of this rapidly moving field.

Qwen cli

OpenCode Go is hard to beat, $10/mo ($5 first month) for up to $60 worth of tokens if used regularly. And no, you don't need to use opencode, they allow any software to use it.

RL with the harness inputs and outputs of users is one of the primary improvers of model performance, a self perpetuating flywheel.

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