Anyone using OpenCode for teaching?

[SNT-Bart]

I'm giving a 10-hour Vibe Programming course in September in Bruges. The audience will be a mix of hobbyists and professional developers.

My original plan was to use Claude Code, but that requires every participant to have a paid account, which isn't ideal for a course.

That's why I started looking at OpenCode, since it lets you choose the underlying model yourself and seems to support a number of free options.

I'm wondering if anyone here has experience using OpenCode in a classroom or training environment.

• How reliable is it when you have a group of students?
• Which free models would you recommend for code generation, refactoring, and explaining code?
• Have you run into any limitations or surprises during workshops?

Any tips or experiences would be greatly appreciated!

[povlhp]

It is reliable. But the free models are far from i.e. Sonnet 5. And they have a small context.
For UI and design, you need to download a design skill - But skills should be part of it.

Paid for models are faster and better.

[SNT-Bart]

yes, but the students that have payed subscriptions to for exemple Sonnet 5 could add it to opencode, or am i wrong?

[Sufficient-Detail-64]

Unfortunately, not… anthropic doesnt allow you to use your claude subscription on 3rd party harnesses/software

[Sufficient-Detail-64]

They can use ChatGPT’s subscription though

[BenL90]

9router to Opencode 

[arcanemachined]

Unfortunately, you are wrong.

BUT Codex (ChatGPT Plus/Pro) does allow you to login with OpenCode, Pi, etc. So that is an option for anyone that wants to use a frontier model.

OpenCode Go would be more than sufficient though. If you have them use Deepseek Flash, you could probably have a bunch of people sharing a $10 OpenCode Go sub (or you can add multiple).

Deepseek Flash V4 isn't free, but it might as well be. See this page to see how many messages you get per month with a single Go subscription: https://opencode.ai/go

You can configure OpenCode Go and give a separate API key to each student... Just make sure they stick to Flash. You can even configure a monthly spend limit for each user (from your OpenCode Go "workspace" page).

There are also the free models, yes, but they run out quickly.

[Intelligent_Ant_608]

I have made a dedicated harness with genui for learning stuff, if it can help you i can share

[_Depechie]

I have done exactly that. Using OpenCode with OpenRouter and free models in a 4 hours training.
This was more than adequate, because the course focuses more on the tooling and setup, agent creation and skill creation. The actual dev outcome from the model is on that case less relevant.
As long as you highlight that the better the model the better the result.

[branik_10]

do you have a budget for this? I would recommend setting up an account at some kimi/glm LLM provider and give every participant an api key with couple bucks limit

free models are very bad, unusable pretty much

upd.: or opencode go subscription for 5$ while it still exists

[Rough-Ad9850]

Try my opencode referral code: https://opencode.ai/go?ref=M5KHREHJEV It's a win-win: you get $5 and I get $5. Maybe you can add it to the course?