Same, I'm currently unemployed and the $20 help me to initiate many small projects. The recent taxing in the token made me start testing local models on my machine. Tho, Claude works better for the front end part imo.
replyIf you are looking at open models, check out Pi, as its very extensible and comes with a sane default. Maybe even roll your own.
replyMost harnesses (claude, codex, opencode etc.) assume that you use a cloud model. There’s no sense of optimization or finer control.
I've been running pi.dev + codex (GPT-5.4) for a long time for my workhorse stuff.
replyActually tried caveman mode yesterday and it made everything SO MUCH BETTER. GPT-5.4 has a habit of being extremely verbose to a ridiculous degree, it's like it's writing a report for a CTO or something and padding everything as much as possible to sound smart.
With caveman it just gives me lists of stuff in a compact format. Perfect.
"free of this drama" and free is great option for companies, of course most use API billing but let's not forget that there are places that budget is limited and being good enough is just perfect.
replythe cursor 20$ a month plan has been working great for me. You can use most models, and unlimited use of composer 2, which is surprisingly good
replyIt's a volatile space.
replyCursor was just acquired by SpaceX, so let's see what happens.