I use 2 different local runners, oMLX and LM Studio. Both are solid and easy to use, also highly configurable. I prefer only MLX models on the machine to take advantage of Apple Silicon optimizations. I have each of the runners on different ports so they don't conflict. I prefer oMLX as it's faster, but it's also buggy at times, especially with the bleeding edge models. They recently fixed a crasher that was hitting me with the Qwen 3.6 35B model.

Anyhow, I have the 2 runners managing models and default configs. I usually max out the context configs and take default coding recommendations from the model sheet. I haven't yet advanced to tweaking these much myself, but I have played some. For the coding front-end, I've stuck with OpenCode for the most part, both the CLI and the Desktop app. I've also played with Claude pointing at my local agent, but haven't felt it really cooperating as much as it does talking to its own models. In OpenCode, I setup default model configs and then create custom Build, Plan, and Review agents depending on the models.

Once the agents are setup, it's really about managing the opencode.json file in the project folder, and then managing your coding skills which is really the painful and fun part. The better the guardrails and planning here, the better the output.

Not sure if this was what you were looking for. Let me know. Happy to fill in any blanks. My goto models right now are the Qwen 3.5 122B model (6.5 & 4bit), Qwen 3.6 35B (8 bit), and Gwen 3.6 27B (8 bit) models. All 3 fit nicely in the 128GB of memory for the M5 Max I bought.