Alas Opencode's source is hideous to read.

When you say "kinda dumb" it's worth noting that the smaller coding models tend not to actually need system prompts to be helpful coding assistants, etc. Qwen maybe more than Muse Glimmer? I've not tested Qwen 3.8 27B enough yet. Even Gemma 4 didn't seem to need much.

Muse Glimmer is so absolutely tuned for one particular pattern (turn-by-turn agentic coding and assistance) that it will do it more or less without a prompt at all (except to set the reasoning level maybe). Beyond the tools announcement, it feels to me like it almost only needs a prompt to do plan mode stuff. If LM Studio (in either of its forms) or Unsloth Desktop had proper support for running inside a linux container rather than just a filesystem sandbox, you'd barely need a dedicated coding agent at all. Osaurus gets even closer.

I wanted to like Opencode but I can't, really. I am enjoying Pi slightly more because it's just way less convoluted and obscure.

FWIW I use Paseo for the GUI, which to some extent eliminates that aspect of decision fatigue; if you like Paseo's UI well enough, you can have it with almost any harness. And since it can connect to its daemon via ssh you can still have the desktop GUI with a container. (Not clear to me if Opencode v2 Desktop makes remote connections to the daemon or just wraps the web interface like v1 did)

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load-bearing a day ago | parent [-]

I do not know how it is with Glimmer, but other Facebook models (Muse and whatever is currently hiding under "Crouton") sure love ignoring direct instructions to do or not do something important (like not using particular broken/inefficient tools). Doesn't matter if it's repeated ten times in screaming caps, they'll still ignore it at least sometimes.

No other model I've used does this.

	▲	dofm a day ago \| parent [-]
		It is often very determined to continue, so it's a little difficult to steer when it gets the bit between its teeth. The most peculiar thing is that it expects to be able to "read" directories? Harmless, so it fails, but it's a waste of a tool call. I am increasingly wondering about modifying Pi's read tool so it returns a directory listing in that context. I have had some difficulty getting it to have a nuanced understanding of how I want to manage git, but I am reaching the conclusion that it's me that needs to change there. Basically I don't think you can say "only commit when I ask you to" and then actually ask it to more than a couple of times in any session, because it will tend to then assume it can go ahead. Scaling the context up might help me a bit there. But apart from this, I really like it. I will test Qwen 3.8 27B properly at some point, (though judging by the insane, empty noise making campaign that is going on on social media, Qwen 4 is near)