The problem here is we're not talking ... I don't know ... hamburgers. If I like McDonald's better than Burger King, it's not going to stop me from buying a Burger King burger (if I'm hungry and there's no McDonald's around). One burger may be a bit better, but I can reasonably substitute one for the other.

Coding AIs aren't burgers. Even if a local LLM is as good as Opus 4.5 (when you sink several thousand dollars into hardware ... and I'm skeptical even then) ... the actual difference between the models is huge.

Let's say I use the $200/month Claude (I don't, I use a cheaper plan, but stay with me). If I switch to a Opus 4.5 equivalent local LLM, and it makes even a single production issue that 5.5 wouldn't, that mistake will cost thousands of dollars.

That "cheaper" model isn't really cheaper.

> it's crossed the same threshold opus 4.5 did: it's good enough

Agreed on that, and actually I'd put it somewhere around opus 4.5 from what I've seen so far.

>> It's obviously nowhere near opus 5.5, but it's crossed the same threshold opus 4.5 did: it's good enough.

Good enough may be sufficient for personal projects, but in a competitive landscape where you're using a "good enough" model and your rivals are using a frontier model like Opus 5.5, you will be at a significant disadvantage.

> If all model-as-a-service companies shut down tomorrow

Is this the nerd version of "doomsday prepping"?