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Comment by Schiendelman | Hacker News Reader

To answer the question in your first sentence - because it's VERY computationally (ha) expensive as a human being to keep up with all the options. It's also very hard to figure out how to run a model like this. There's no installer. If you really really care, which 99% of people do not, you have to google a guide, and then find out it's out of date...

I've tried a number of these, and the learning curve is very steep compared to "install Claude Code and pay $100/mo". There is no way saving me $50/month matters compared to figuring that out.

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But it just works with Claude Code? They have a guide on their website.

https://docs.z.ai/devpack/tool/claude

Here's my setup. I add this to my .bashrc

export ZAI_API_KEY="your_key_here"

alias claudez='ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN="$ZAI_API_KEY" ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL="https://api.z.ai/api/anthropic" ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_OPUS_MODEL="glm-5.2[1m]" ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_SONNET_MODEL="glm-4.7" ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_HAIKU_MODEL="glm-4.7" claude'

Then I just run claudez

pro tip the same thing works with deepseek https://api-docs.deepseek.com/guides/anthropic_api

Even more pro tip: Claude Code can set this up for you haha

Sure, I'm not saying I, a software engineer, cannot do this. I'm saying it's significant onboarding friction.

Unless this were a massive differentiator, people aren't going to be "talking about it" the way GP suggests!

You're seriously suggesting that setting up opencode or tweaking your claude code config or etc is too much trouble to be worth saving $50 /mo? That's absurd. Doubly so when the audience in question is already using LLMs so ... just ask your existing LLM for help if it seems daunting.

I'm not just suggesting that, I'm trying to be crystal clear: it's a gap that probably cuts TAM by 95% or more. Most LLM users are not software engineers. Even those that are don't care enough to muck with their settings to try out a model. Keep in mind I'm not answering the question "Is this hard to install?" - I'm answering the question "Why aren't people talking about this?"

Doesn't pass the sniff test. Casuals messing around already go to far more trouble to set up openclaw or comfyui or what have you.

What percentage of "casuals"? ;)

"Casuals" just use the web interface from the provider, which Z.ai also has

I would broadly agree with this (based on years of dealing directly with user-facing UX and setup steps). Small hurdles, even easy ones, create larger barriers to adoption then you’d think.

Thats not absurd. Do you know what software engineers make? Do you know what a Starbucks coffee costs? 50 bucks is nothing for someone in that life.

The friction is near 0 when you can ask another LLM to set it up for you.

Here are a few frictions I see that reduce reach, in order:

1) You haven't even heard of it.

2) You have to know to look for both GLM and Z.ai. These are usually in the same article when reporting about GLM is written, at least.

3) You have to understand there could be a benefit in trying it; you have to want to try it for some reason. Their own blog post puts it below Opus 4.8 in each of the three benchmarks they used.

4) You have to figure out the pricing, which isn't obviously in the blog post...

5) When I first went to Z.ai, I got an error popup (not logged in): "You do not have permission to access this resource. Please contact your administrator for assistance." I am using a personal computer...

6) When I typed something in the resultant field and pressed enter, I got "Clear Current Chat? To start a new chat, your current conversation will be discarded. Sign in to save chats"

I think today's article helped with 1 and 2, which helps their top of funnel. But they're fighting a big uphill battle.

> it's significant onboarding friction.

It's crazy that apparently writing software without knowing how to edit a single config file is normal now.

It's crazy that apparently doing math without knowing how to do long division by hand is normal now.

Absolutely ludicrous comparison

Is it, though?

I'd argue math is significantly more complex than language.

The real question is: should the file be edited in emacs or vim?

For me it's about tolerance. When I was 13, I could and would customize everything, so much that the computer repair shop told my father that their son "likely is a hacker or something".

At 40, I could easily configure claude code to use another model, even if there weren't any official guides with a bit of MITM fun, but I don't want to invest my attention / heavily use something that will most likely break in the near future.

You can ask the agent to change its own configs. Pi does that by default.

Not really, you can literally have Claude set it up for you.

> There's no installer.

There's ZCode (https://zcode.z.ai). Which is like the Codex App.

That's as "easy" as it is for non-devs that you're complaining about.

I'm not complaining about anything. I'm answering a question.

How does it compare to OpenCode? I already have too many LLM CLIs installed :(

It's also very hard to figure out how to run a model like this. There's no installer.

Yes, there is. It's called Claude Code. Point it at the HuggingFace URL and say "Download these weights and build whatever is needed to run them, then test the model."

I really miss the time when people thought that the idea of someone telling an un-sandboxed AI "do whatever is needed to X" was unrealistically stupid.

Skill issue

(In all seriousness, I agree this is a problem. That capability is too powerful not to take advantage of, though. Nobody needs to struggle with this sort of thing anymore, but yes, obviously, it should happen in a VM or at least a container.)

install opencode, then either pay $10 for their plan, or add an openrouter api key.

I agree with this.

I'd pay for an out of the box solution. i.e. an Installer with updates

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