> The problem is that it's much easier to use the SOTA models (especially if they are subsidized) instead of spending time fixing the knobs with the local one.

That's not a problem, that's a feature; I have something like 8 tabs open to different free-tier providers. ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are the SOTA ones.

I have no problem maxing one out, then moving to the next. I can do this all day, have them implement specific functions (or classes) in my code. The things is, because I actually know how to write and design software, I don't need to run an agent in a loop to produce everything in a day, I can use the web chatbots with copy/paste to literally generate thousands of lines of code per hour while still having a strong mental model of the code that I can go in and change whatever I need to.[1]

---------------------

[1] Just did that this morning on a Python project: because I designed what I needed, each generation was me prompting for a single function. So when I needed to add something this morning I didn't even bother asking an chatbot to do it, I just went ahead directly to the correct place and did it.

You can't do that if you generate the entire thing from specs.

We are speaking about local AI, and having all this SOTA models basically for free is blocking the progress of local or independent third party setups.