All the previous models that were "frontier level, just try it!" but wouldn't run at all in agentic mode, including previous Qwens, just disappointed, period.
Then I ran then Qwen 3.8 27b and while it was super slow (4t/s) it literally one-shotted creating a usable "web search/pull" skill for `pi.dev`. while any other model previously just entirely failed to create anything usable even with actual guidance.
Since then I have actually gotten a gemma-4 12B qat 4bit quantized with a ~250MB MTP from unsloth to work with a 32k context "working" on this setup at 80-120 t/s. That's usable for private stuff on a co-incidental box!
It's still only 32k context and it's entirely dumb vs. our API paid at-work Claude Opus. But for entirely private local stuff it's totally workable without breaking the bank even after all these AI price hikes!. I bought this rig literally just for gaming a month ago.