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Posted by eggbrain 1 day ago

Ask HN: What's your current AI agentic setup?

I'm curious how people on HN are using AI day to day, and came up with a list of questions I thought could be interesting to know. No need to answer every question of course, just wanted to get a gut feel how people are using AI.

1) What AI subscriptions are you personally paying for? (Claude, ChatGPT/Codex, Cursor, etc)

- Which tiers?

- Have you purchased multiple subscriptions from the same provider (eg two Claude accounts)?

2) Are you using models outside (or instead) of those subscriptions? For example, pay-as-you-go APIs, OpenRouter, or locally hosted models.

- Which models and providers?

3) What coding harnesses and interfaces are you using? Are you sticking with the default CLIs or IDE integrations, or using alternatives like OpenCode, Pi, Aider, Muse Code, or custom-built harnesses?

- What made you switch harnesses (if you switched)?

4) Are you using any agent orchestration or swarm tools?

- For example, Munder Difflin, Gas Town, Ruflo, or something custom.

5) Are you using broader agent platforms like OpenClaw / Hermes Agent / Grok bot / Dots / Muse?

- If you are using them, what are your main use cases?

-----

I know my workflow has differed significantly from a year ago, and so it would be interesting to capture a snapshot today of what people are using and why.

509 points | 637 commentspage 13
ChrisRR 1 day ago|
These comments read like people just bragging about having multiple AI subscriptions but not actually giving any info about what they're using them for
platevoltage 1 day ago||
I can't for the life of me figure out why people need to spend so much. Maybe I'm just using them wrong.
saulpw 1 day ago||
I think a lot of people/companies are using 10x the tokens for 10% improvement. If you're willing to spend a modicum of attention/effort looking at what the bots are doing, one max Claude plan with Opus and occasionally Fable is very effective.
DIE_DIE_DIE 1 day ago||
[dead]
enesalatas 20 hours ago||
1) Claude Max 5x, ChatGPT Plus (for minimal usage of Codex, mostly fired as a Pre/Post PR hook for Claude Code to get reviews from GPT models locally

2) None for now.

3) Claude Code CLI, but not always in a terminal I'm sitting in. I talk to it on Telegram and Slack for different projects.

4) Something custom that grew into a project: Spool (https://github.com/enes-alatas/spool). It runs long-lived Claude Code loops, each with a name and a mission. Each one wakes on its own timer or when someone messages it, works, and sleeps, and the session resumes with its context. Each loop gets its own container with an egress allowlist, and they message each other and me in a Telegram or Slack group. A web control room shows what every loop is doing and what it costs.

5) No, Spool covers it for me.

amterp 1 day ago||
1) One 5x Claude sub, one pro lite codex sub

2) Not really, the value proposition on the subs are just so much greater.

3) I'm using Claude Code and Codex, crucially thru Muster[0] which I've been working on. It's a herdr inspired Libghostty-powered terminal which understands agents you're running, helps you manage them, supports remote devenvs, and it provides a CLI for agents to spawn, work, and message each other, no matter the harness and across machines.

4) I'm working on my own factory atm, which combines Muster and Kan[1] which is a offline, Kanban-as-plain-files-in-VCS project I'm working on and happens to work really well with agents. I recently added card dependencies to Kan and a kan ready command so I can have director agents orchestrate and hand out tasks based on what's ready and prioritized in Kan.

5) Not at this time. I played around with dots but I haven't been convinced it can do anything for me that my own solutions aren't better at.

[0] https://github.com/amterp/muster

[1] https://github.com/amterp/kan

alok-g 1 day ago|
>> [1] https://github.com/amterp/kan

Nice! I am guessing the intended use is on developers' own machines, not putting on a server and live co-editing in a team meeting. Pls. let me know if I have misunderstood. Thanks.

amterp 23 hours ago||
Yeah intended use is in every dev's own checkout of the given repo, on their own machine.
entrope 1 day ago||
For local inference, DS4.1F 1017 quantized to 2.25 bpw from oh-my-pi; this is slow (~500 tps prefill, 30 tps decode) because it's a Radeon R9700 on PCIe4. When I don't need local inference, Opus 5.5 reviewed by GPT-6.1 Sol in VS Code, both $20/month. Mostly I use them to build small analysis tools because I am not really an individual contributor any more. I used to hit both my session and week quotas frequently, but that is much less common since Opus 5.5.
anigbrowl 23 hours ago||
Deepseek/Deepseek Harness with about 30 plugins and a lot of customization. I tried IDE integrations with Jetbrains for a few months and hated it. Now I enjoy juggling 3-4 projects at once. Costs maybe $20/week. A lot of jobs you can work at for a long time with little cost because there's a 99% cache hit rate.

Sometimes I despatch it on open-ended tasks that I'd never take on otherwise; for example I have a little fleet of 10 agents digging up medieval Japanese Buddhist parables, translating them from scratch, and feeding them into a custom interface optimized for language study.

Most of the time I give it a moderately detailed description of the scope and key/unique features I want in a new project, and it banks on work from previous projects to know what sort of deliverables I want, track and review its own mistakes etc., then I steer it from a rough prototype into something more polished. I find it equally useful for coding/application development and research/synthesis tasks.

gaewagwgawa 22 hours ago|
[flagged]
vessenes 22 hours ago||
Please refrain from ad hominem attacks here on HN. Or really, anywhere.
e5uhehrdhdrh 22 hours ago||
dont use words you dont understand.
zkmon 15 hours ago||
Tried the popular agents and paid models for some time, and now settled with a local model (Qwen3.8-27B-Q_6) and opencode desktop.

My work doesn't really require ultra super-intelligent models, or one-shot solutions. It's a standard python API, web app and some strict compliance requirements and tons of test cases. I have time to give the Q27B a few iterations. I monitor the progress and give directions while it keeps chugging off for about 30 mins for each medium-hard task. But I like the results. Exactly what is needed. It also allows me work on high-level stuff.

Bayart 12 hours ago||
- Wrapper : Orca

- Harness : oh-my-pie

- Models : OpenAI $20 sub (mostly using Sol/Luna) + Deepseek + JEV

- Skills : Mostly Osmani's agent skills, ub-mode, agency skills for personas + custom stuff

I'm kinda reworking everything as the moment, I'm having issues with other people's workflows (whether it is Pokock, Osmani or Uncle Bob) even though there are bit I like and I'm still looking at how to balance quotas, thinking levels, velocity.

corky_buchek 12 hours ago|
what is the difference between a wrapper and a harness?
Bayart 11 hours ago||
The harness is the environment in which you manage your AI workflow. Orchestration etc. The "wrapper" (don't know if there's a better name for that around) gives extra ergonomics to glue it together with files, browsing, git etc. Think Claude Code the CLI and Claude Code the app.
tgel0 18 hours ago||
1) Google AI Pro (no-brainer for me since I'm deep into the Google ecosystem), OpenCode Go and this month I'm trying out X Premium (mainly because of Grok Bot, which I surprisingly like more than I thought I would). At my day job, I also have access to GitHub Copilot. 2) No, but I might try out DeepSeek's own API in the near future 3) My main setup is a Herdr instance hosted on a cheap GCP VM that I access via Tailscale. There I'm running Pi, Antigravity and Cursor via their default CLIs. 4) Nothing apart from Herdr 5) Hermes + Grok Bot mainly for non/light-coding stuff like digest-style monitors for different websites (such as HN), social media etc.
bitforger 1 day ago||
1) Claude Ultra (aka Max 20x)

2) No

3) Claude Code

4) Custom WIP https://muster.town/

5) Custom personal agent setup https://github.com/mitchellgordon95/miniclaw

Usage is mainly wiki building around personal info (finances, topics of interest), calorie counting, and doing various things from my dumb phone (rideshare booking, checking MTA Bus schedules, etc.)

npteljes 17 hours ago|
1. I'm personally paying for Chatgpt Plus, single account. I mostly use it for personal stuff, and occasional coding - one-off scripts I do from the chat interface, and I used Codex for a more complex project.

2. I sometimes have questions I don't want to associate with my main account, I use duck.ai or chatgpt.com in a private tab. I also dabbled with self-hosting, but it's mostly curiosity, testing abliterated models, testing linux-amd integration etc.

3. Sticking to the defaults. My dayjob pays for Copilot, which means a Copilot plugin in IntelliJ

4. I haven't even looked into agent orchestration and swarms.

5. Not using agent platforms either.

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