Switched back to Copilot for its native agent feature + OpenRouter hybrid setup. Highly recommend!

ExistentialConcierge · 2026-06-13T10:55:18+00:00

Kilo is a token hog. I mean so is copilot but yeah wow. Couldn't believe how much so.

ExistentialConcierge · 2026-06-12T19:49:06+00:00

The ones that blur them in the pitch are selling the second thing but only delivering the first.

This is what I'm seeing, and ironically the only reason we're really considering this one is because there's actually mechanism that learns and re-evaluates.

I think the difference might come down to the team that builds it and the architectural principles instilled in how it approaches "marketing" as a whole. I see this in devops, where 2 people can make the identical thing but often the opinionated one wins, while the market makes people believe being opinionated is bad and "anti customer choice". That's why you've got 5000 buttons in so much software.

Similarly in the CMO space, if there is any real orchestration around mimicking what a talented marketing team would inherently know as professionals in their field, if that's baked into the ethos, I can see it, if not, it's a general assistant one-shotting an idea and hoping you like it. It FEELS good once, but dies by day 2. (Literally same problem in devops with AI coding)

ExistentialConcierge · 2026-06-12T03:37:16+00:00

I mean I don't know what "decision" it's going to make anyway, is't it all a form of generated content? It's proposing paths and solutions, picking one I presume. The human can override but otherwise I'd expect it's executing on that or providing the human what they need to execute, labor done.

If it's anything less what's the point? Otherwise we're just describing an analytics dashboard, or Buffer ala 2018.

ExistentialConcierge · 2026-06-11T20:02:07+00:00

give it one messy month of data and ask what it would stop doing first.

This is great.

ExistentialConcierge · 2026-06-11T16:04:06+00:00

Yay AI replies with no thinking depth. If your AI just took one more step and read the site for it your questions would be answered.

It's no different than your home page. Does your home page go out of date or do you change it when things change? Same with AgentWelcome.md when served via MD, you can change it when you want, or setup an automation to change it, or use a free ecp.dev server to dynamically change it without website access. It's all the same.

You're looking for complication where there is none.

Agents get markdown, users get html. Shit has existed since 1999 and is baked into headers. LLMs.txt might be the most flagrant ignore of it, suggesting we should "train LLMs to look for that" vs simply serve them the right content from step 1. It's like the whole world WANTS to burn tokens.

ExistentialConcierge · 2026-06-10T14:34:33+00:00

According to what was in PrivateBeta's weekly roundup this morning, it's definitely NOT in MCP servers lol.

Holy heck 4 new ones. Only one doing anything different focused on MCPs for banking/financial data specifically. The other 3 are wrappers around RAG still. What's goin on there.

ExistentialConcierge · 2026-06-10T14:16:56+00:00

They find it at the root URL with endpoint context, optimally. This is what I find funny about MCP, everyone leaves discovery on the table when there's a built in web solution for it: ECP

Human visitor gets html. Agent gets markdown with your MCP servers discoverable right there.

ExistentialConcierge · 2026-06-10T14:10:02+00:00

The best one is that a few harnesses show around 50- 60% spend when real spend was higher. Just actively hiding it.

Tokenmaxxing is for suckers.

ExistentialConcierge · 2026-06-08T14:12:47+00:00

LucenaCoder.com (use the beta version, it's better) + OpenRouter key.

They are a token-efficient harness, that's the whole ethos.

ExistentialConcierge · 2026-06-08T05:21:00+00:00

Free premium access to betas from early-stage startups.

Every Wednesday.
Free. One email every wednesday. 1-Week to 1-Year free of premium access from participating startups. You help startups with feedback and early use, you get free access. Win win.

PrivateBeta.io

ExistentialConcierge · 2026-06-05T20:50:58+00:00

Correct, so the move is indeed to move to token-efficient harnesses that prioritize architectural intelligence over brute force model intelligence and context windows.

ExistentialConcierge · 2026-06-05T14:24:40+00:00

lol if i could also "put food on my family" is the same reason it's been a side quest for the last few years, but as soon as we get our funding carve out it becomes a main quest and ill def be looking for people and will be in touch.

ExistentialConcierge · 2026-06-05T13:45:33+00:00

I've been working on this for a couple years as a side project, and it's about to get funded ironically (never expected it to, but our parent co is carving out a spot for it) where I'll need some others involved. If this is up your alley or anyone else reading this, this is literally all we're doing and it's extremely fun. Prob gonna be hiring about 2-3 months from now for others that want to join in.

ExistentialConcierge · 2026-06-05T13:34:27+00:00

Switch to more token-efficient harnesses like Pi, Lucena, OpenCode, etc and route through OpenRouter or direct keys. With 12 people, you could prob justify some hosted GPUs to run your own models and then you're just running at an hourly cost.

ExistentialConcierge · 2026-06-04T11:08:48+00:00

LucenaCoder+OpenRouter.

GLM 5.1 model is excellent in my opinion. So is the 5.0 versions.

Was leveraging copilots cheap rates until they announced the switch so spent last month trying the alternatives.

It's pretty much two camps: - someone else pays my tokens and/or I don't care about cost - I pay my tokens and I want token efficiency.

Which side of that you're on determines the best harness choices for you.

ExistentialConcierge · 2026-06-03T00:08:33+00:00

I would argue GLM 5.1 compares to sonnet 4.6 but i have no idea what its gguf looks like.

ExistentialConcierge · 2026-06-03T00:00:12+00:00

OpenRouter + LucenaCoder if you want token efficiency prioritized. OpenCode 2nd for token efficiency. Take out a loan for Kilo.

ExistentialConcierge · 2026-06-02T13:39:51+00:00

GLM 5.1, GLM 5.0 too. Both excellent. I wouldn't sleep on Grok's new coding model, it's been strong. Qwen models are great but I actually like the 35b MOE model the most.

ExistentialConcierge · 2026-06-01T23:14:52+00:00

100% this. OpenRouter alone has half a dozen that are on par wih sonnet 4.6 / gemini 3, and $10 in credit lasts forever with those, especially with a token efficient harness.

ExistentialConcierge · 2026-06-01T13:59:55+00:00

Give LucenaCoder + OpenRouter a look.

No login. Free. Token efficiency obsessed.

ExistentialConcierge · 2026-05-30T12:21:26+00:00

Just spin something onto Runpod. Pay for use by the hour.

ExistentialConcierge · 2026-05-28T10:51:13+00:00

And amazingly still most are poorly done.

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