Posted by eggbrain 1 day ago
Ask HN: What's your current AI agentic setup?
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?
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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.
2) DeepSeek when even OpenAI complains about cyber security stuff.
3) Pi in Emacs (Pillish) and a yet-to-be-published pi-deck on top which makes it more like herdr with more features.
4) custom pi orchestration. Mostly 2 tools: `do` (fork conv with question) and `delegate` (new pi session with question)
5) no
I've moved all my ssh keys into a key-agent which prompts for key use as I got alarmed by claude attempting to login to remote systems to verify things as it worked through problems.
2. No
3. Lynx (lynx.railcode.dev) & CLIs (less and less since Lynx)
4. No
5. Tried a few but never stuck around
This setup is working really well for me and provides a good balance of cost and efficiency.
For day-to-day tasks, I am using Goose (https://goose-docs.ai) with OpenRouter.
I am curious why you use Kilo credits? What benefits does that give you over buying the credits directly?
To me it seems like an obvious unnecessary middleman...
I am not sure however if this approach is optimal. Monthly subscriptions may be offering much higher value than API pricing.
How do you find Kilo vs. various other alternatives? I observe that it is barely talked about on HN and elsewhere. Thanks.
I am curious, when do you typically run different models? Do you put the same tasks to multiple models in parallel and compare the results? Or do you have a heuristic that model A is best for certain types of tasks and model B for others, etc?
I have found that recently I seem to just use deepseek for almost everything. It is just good enough and much much cheaper than everything else.
2.) Yes, I'm currently using OpenRouter. It's good for quickly switching around and trying different models, but I currently have it constrained to just 3 models and 1 provider. Truthfully I could just use that provider directly, but I like retaining some flexibility.
3.) I've been using OpenCode for over a year. I think it's an incredible tool and its wide support is a massive boon. It's really easy to pull in skills, tag the skills, and switch providers. Their more recent changes turning the CLI into more of a GUI has been quite annoying (wdym I have to tap an X in my CLI to close a tab), but not enough for me to (yet) look elsewhere.
4.) Nope, no idea what those are but thanks for teaching me about something new.
5.) In EU (DK) so we don't get access to Dots or Muse like everyone else. I have used Grok Bot and I really like it. It's super helpful and I'm using it as a personal assistant. I delegate tasks to it that I just can't be bothered doing manually or can't figure out easily (e.g using some accounting tools, figuring out cryptic documentation, etc.). I've also used Hermes Agent, but I didn't like it as much. It's great intent but the UI/UX is really not it. It looks like it was taken out of a 90s hacker movie and I'm sure some people like it, but I prefer tools that look polished and focused. I might switch back to it though if something was to happen to Grok Bot.
P.S the models I primarily use are DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 and GLM 5.3 Flash. If you use skills to their full potential they feel SotA to me (my reference point for SotA being OpenAI models we use at work, since we have an enterprise agreement).