IMO this comes down to your harness. Any frontier model from a huge shop has an inherent benefit in the system you're using it in. Search, memory, skills, integrations you don't realize even exist make them much more powerful. It is some effort but I recommend trying Hermes Agent and setting it up fully, that's the closest you'll get to a more complete experience.

Some of us are stuck on subscriptions and our executives will never give us API access.

But also, everyone says "it's the harness" and almost nobody ever gives good examples, it gets a bit tiring to read everywhere, as if everyone wants to sell a harness to us.