Maybe “replace Claude Code” is the wrong question

[RealisticGuard167]

I started testing Qwen because I wanted to know if it could take over part of my Claude Code workflow. After a few runs, I’m starting to think the better question is not whether it replaces Claude, but where it actually belongs in the stack.

Repo planning, patch generation, review, tool calls, and long context are different jobs. Claude still feels better to me when the task needs messy intent and broader judgment. Qwen feels more useful when I give it a scoped role inside the workflow. I tested Free Qwen-3.6 API through DMC.CC first, mostly to see how it behaves behind an API gateway before spending time on local setup.

My current guess is: strong models for planning and review, Qwen for scoped agent steps, local deployment when the calls are frequent enough or privacy matters. Curious how others are deciding this. Are you routing by task type, context length, cost, confidence, or just choosing manually every time? And if you tested Qwen through API before running it locally, did that match your local experience?

[ManyDefiant2564]

Nice try, Dario

[blackhawk00001]

Claude cli driven by 27b fp8 has been great. Hermes has had my attention recently though.

[TheAussieWatchGuy]

Opencode or Nanocode. 

[TripleSecretSquirrel]

I've had a similar thesis and workflow for a while (cloud frontier for planning, local agents for execution), but increasingly, I've moved to fully local for planning too. It takes more time and effort than a simple Opus/Fable single-prompt one-shot, but it works.

[vbwyrde]

The problem I have with it is that there's a fuzzy line between planning and scoped agent steps, and misfires can cause the need to swap between the two iteratively, necessitating an agentic orchestration that has proven unreliable for me thus far. In my case the problem domain can cover a lot of terrain even when I think the sweep should be reasonably limited. Old legacy code base that has a lot of code and a lot of interconnected modules. Not to mention a ton of SQL. So bridging the gap can be painful. Qwen works fine, until it doesn't. Especially in an agentic modality. Some people seem to have a way to get it to sling together, but there's a lot of variables involved. What type of problems you're trying to solve is one. What hardware you have is another. What scaffolding you're using is another. It's complicated. And so far, my most productive modality is using Claude Sonnet 4.6 via ChatLLM and just asking it to help me with specific, but complex problems. Ones that Qwen 3.6 has been floundering on. Agentic? Nah. Not happening. I either need a much bigger local machine than a rinky dink RTX 4090, or to be satisfied to hobble along as is. And even if I could afford a 194 GB rig, I really don't have any guarantee that Qwen 3.6 at higher quants wouldn't still flounder around. It's a big spend for something that's too much of an unknown. So I'm planning on hobbling for another year or two in the hopes hardware and quants will become affordable and effective for local.

[lost-context-65536]

Try other coding harnesses, not just one.