How are people using custom harnesses cost effectively? Do they avoid Anthropic models so they can use OpenAI subscription pricing and open weights stuff?
I use Pi and mostly open weight models. I pay for the $20/month Ollama plan and use Deepseek and GLM through that. I’ve never hit the limits on it, but I tend to ask for targeted things rather than “implement a whole feature in one prompt”.
I do keep an OpenRouter account topped up for things that Ollama doesn’t have. 99% of my usage there is embeddings, the other 1% is wanting to test some new model Ollama doesn’t have.
I haven't used the US labs in months. Kimik3 for planning and GLM5.3flash or the new Deepseek Flash for code.
That’s exactly what I do. OpenAI + Opencode Go subs, 0 interest in Claude.
Yes. Or- use them at work, where management is taking a... hands off approach to ~integrating ai~ into the workplace.
OpenAI. It avoids Claudish too.
I am using Pi with anthropic models for plan & execution, openai models for code review and fallback in case I run out of tokens. Also have custom hooks to automatically compact, switch models based on the type of tasks, change effort and custom statusline. Also have custom setup in Pi to calls tools and CLIs instead of relying on mcps. The level of customization I can reach with pi is not really feasiable with codex or claudeCode. By the way anthropic changed it's ToS regarding custom harness: you can`t use their model unless you got extra usage enabled or paying through APi billing, you cant use your subscription anymore. We all guessed what the reason might be. Also codex is open source, I havent really looked at that project yet because Pi fulfill my desires for now.
I'm using Opencode Go in OMP or Hermes. $10 a month and I have only ever hit a limit using qwen3.8MAX on X-High. This is a migration from 20x on Claude.
pi on open weights, I only use frontier models to do a review pass
For what it's worth I've been using Anthropic models on Pi for months now with no issues. It's not recommended since it breaks TOS but you can do it.