PEOPLE ARE NOW RUNNING CLAUDE CODE WITH LOCAL AI MODELS TO AVOID API COSTS. By connecting tools like Ollama and Gemma 4, developers can build apps locally with unlimited usage and no monthly billing.

running claude code with ollama is a sleeper move. proves the harness is what's actually doing the work, not the model. people thought the moat was model quality. turns out it's the orchestration layer. local model + claude code agentic flow is wildly underrated

and this is exactly why the Mac Studio vs RTX 5090 debate matters. local AI needs the right hardware to actually run smoothly

Local models work for dev loops. Production agents need frontier models. The real cost problem isn't the API bill. It's agents without scope constraints re-reading your entire repo every cycle. Scope them tight and the bill drops 80%.

What is this brain rot, you either use Claude AI or you don't, why TF would you use their software in that case to begin with.

Local models solve the cost problem. But the workflow problem still stays: What was the task? What did the agent change? Did it stay in scope? What proof is missing? Where do you continue after the run stops? That’s why I built RunTrim. A local-first control layer around AI coding runs.

claude code routed through ollama works on toy prompts, breaks on real workloads. tool call formatting and the long-context plan/edit loops are tuned to anthropic's behavior, gemma 4 misses them. prompt caching plus batch on opus 4.7 lands 4-5x cheaper than sticker.

@ollama Open-Source LLMs & Local Fine-Tuning. Mastering LoRA, vLLM, Ollama, and Custom SLMs, ebook

Big boys now run 2 CODEX in parallel - one for serious work on GPT5.5, another one in CODEX Ollama CLI on 120b Nemotron-3-Super Cloud for simpler stuff.

Just pay for it. It’s not a new concept.

I’m thinking about testing a setup but I worry about the workflow. Even if all the tools are there getting the same design to finished product workflow maybe cumbersome.

API prices are too dang high!

Built exactly this — Trooper is a Go proxy that falls back to local Ollama when Claude quota runs out, with full conversation context preserved. Zero config, single binary.

True

People really don't wanna pay

@ollama I'm now just waiting for these corporates to charge for their tool if we're not using their models 😂

@ollama Open source is going to change lots of things in AI

claude code en local avec ollama, c'est la fin progressive d'un modèle : louer un cerveau partagé à anthropic le début d'un autre : posséder son agent qui code sans demander la permission à personne on vit la transition en direct

Local models are getting better and better, but they are still far behind the frontier models.

Love seeing people get creative with Claude to cut costs and boost productivity

@ollama Local inference: bypassing API costs with cleverness.

Tell me something new !! I have been doing this for a few months now.. This is nothing new.

Does it work on standard macboon pro for GLM 5.1

seems like a good way to get banned forever, no thank you

로컬 AI모델로 CLAUDE CODE 를 사용 할수 방법은 무엇인가요?

Would need a good hardware system. It would be so great to use both mix of local models + claude api that would make using claude api much cheaper as you can won't be losing tokens unnecessarily. Is there a tool like that? Rather than using only local models.

ngl this is just local devs being local devs

It’s make big senses

local models sucks. plain & simple

Running Claude Code on local models is great for cost control, but the tradeoff is usually tool reliability and long run consistency. The interesting benchmark is not just price per token, it is how often a real workflow finishes cleanly without babysitting.

@grok what are some models that can run reasonably well on an M1 MacBook Air?

The cost constraint was always the invisible ceiling on how much AI you'd actually use in your workflow. Local models collapse that ceiling. When the marginal cost of a query drops to zero, the question shifts from 'should I use AI for this?' to 'why wouldn't I?'

running claude with local LLM :) type 'hello', wait 5 to 10 min... It works with cloud LLM. (ollama etc)

@thebernardali