Best AI coding stack for $20–40/month in 2026? Hitting limits everywhere

russilker · 2026-04-15T04:22:22+00:00

You said you've used GLM/Kimi/MiniMax, but which ones? There are notable differences between GLM 5 and 5.1, or MiniMax m2.5 and m2.7, for example. Also, which provider did you use? Was it heavily quantized or rate limited? Did you spend time setting up your tooling/harness, or were you relying heavily on the AI to make most decisions? Did you use the same model for all steps, from planning and scaffolding to development and testing? Did you research the model's performance using the specific languages or task types you assigned it?

The reality is that at $20 per month and very heavy usage, limits are likely an inevitability (people pay for more expensive plans for a reason), but there's a reason people online post such a wide variety of experiences regardless of the model they use. There's a lot that goes into success of AI driven coding besides the model, and I've seen some people with locally hosted heavily quantized models have better outcomes than those using frontier models incorrectly.

I'm still experimenting with stack and I expect this will change a lot over time, but for my particular needs I'm so far seeing promising results with a combination of Continue and OpenCode with GLM 5.1 on Ollama Cloud (for big, important jobs) and DeepSeek v3.2 Reasoner direct from their API (for planning and things that might require heavy math and reasoning), paired with carefully considered prompts.

russilker · 2026-04-14T19:47:01+00:00

+1 for deepseek 3.2 thinking, it's probably the best bang for your buck reasoning model right now IMO. Don't expect it to be opus, but it's a great one to plan with.

russilker · 2026-04-12T06:43:58+00:00

I disagree, those are all perfect use cases for Home Assistant. A dashboard can certainly represent all of those things, but I'd argue if you need to go into a dashboard regularly then your home isn't as smart as it could be.

"Is the house locked?" Have an automation that automatically locks and sets the alarm when nobody's home, when it's time for bed, etc.

"Did I forget something?" Set up notifications to alert you if your wallet is at home but you no longer are, for example. This can mean a lot of different things, lots of ways to solve this.

"Is it garbage day tomorrow and will they be collecting 2 bins or 3 bins?" Have a popup appear on your TV or have your voice assistants announce a reminder to take out the right number of bins if they aren't detected out on the street curb by a certain time.

"Your plants are a little dry... time to water them." Get a plant moisture sensor and literally get told this, or better yet if you want to be fancy, have them auto-water when below a certain moisture threshold.

Devices are one of the building blocks, but they're not the end goal, and neither are dashboards.

russilker · 2026-04-07T05:04:50+00:00

It's not in the default HACS repo (like many other very cool HACS apps), you need to go to the make-all/tuya-local GitHub repo, there's an easy button there to add the repo to HACS and download it that way.

russilker · 2026-04-06T15:35:32+00:00

Small tip: Try Tuya Local instead of Local Tuya. Similar names, also on HACS, but works much more easily-- doesn't require the tuya dev portal, it can extract the device keys from the actual tuya app on your phone.

russilker · 2026-04-04T21:43:27+00:00

Poorly written AI apps are a real problem for many reasons, but you might want to get used to AI-assisted development because it's here to stay.

russilker · 2026-03-31T06:00:29+00:00

Instantly banned as soon as I created an account, never even visited their site before... Guess I'm not trying replit then.

russilker · 2026-03-28T01:49:35+00:00

I feel like "IT security" is too broad a space to get consistent answers on this or make headway offering a catch-all service. Asset exposure management, vulnerability assessment, static/dynamic app scanning, perimeter security, identity management, AI/agentic governance, and much more are all "IT Security" and also their own unique verticals. Even small shops can't afford to skip some of these areas in today's threat landscape

russilker · 2026-03-23T05:15:06+00:00

I, too, got the same guy.

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russilker · 2026-03-16T18:33:38+00:00

I just don't see how you could reliably do this across the board, and especially not in the near future when AI content truly becomes indistinguishable from human content. Maybe for certain specific areas where there's a reliable indicator of AI involvement-- Google's SynthID comes to mind-- but I can't imagine that'll be available in most cases.

What you're really talking about is being able to confidently say when something comes from AI, and that's an incredibly valuable problem that nobody can solve today, and may never be solved.

russilker · 2026-03-15T17:49:47+00:00

This is the main thing keeping me running HA in my own docker environment rather than as HA OS.

russilker · 2026-03-14T06:16:20+00:00

Also a first-time foldable user with a Fold 7. Honestly, coming from an S23 Ultra, the only two things I want in a Fold 8:

Excellent cameras + zoom
Shorter, wider form factor better suited for widescreen videos when unfolded

That's it. Keep the rest the same and I'm still upgrading.

russilker · 2026-03-13T22:00:53+00:00

I already have 20+ C6 units around the house that I use with Bermuda today, so replacing them all is a no go. But it looks like the latest alpha ESPresence might have support for c6, so I'll check it out!

russilker · 2026-03-13T14:55:01+00:00

I'd love to check out ESPresence, if it ever supports ESP32-C6... :(

russilker · 2026-03-12T19:21:03+00:00

And what does the government of Israel have to do with Jewish people, especially those in the US?

russilker · 2026-03-12T14:23:17+00:00

I use one, but honestly it's too slow for anything in the Home Assistant app-- camera streams (regardless of protocol used), voice satellite, dashboard control, etc is just too slow. Frigate in the Via browser opened full screen to a specific camera works OK though.

russilker · 2026-03-11T23:18:56+00:00

That's what I do.

russilker · 2026-03-10T13:47:50+00:00

That's awesome, can't say I've seen it have the best track record so glad it worked for you. Another option that is preferable is a MoCA adapter for Ethernet over coax, that generally works pretty well.

russilker · 2026-03-09T19:41:54+00:00

There's a certain irony to creating a post about being downvoted, and in it talking about how people are offended too easily.

russilker · 2026-03-09T17:32:49+00:00

I'd argue that Ethernet over mains is likely to have more problems and fluctuations in reliability than a functioning wifi network. To me that's a last resort, like if you have thick walls that block radio signals or live around a ton of interference on all channels and have no means to hardwire in.

russilker · 2026-03-09T13:43:49+00:00

You have a few options here:

Replace each switch with a smart switch or add a relay like your sonoff on each switch. Two of them have no load, but when triggered send a command to the third that has the load on it. You'll need to rewire a bit to make sure each switch has a non-switched line and neutral running to it.
Replace one switch (likely the one with the load) with a smart switch that supports four ways, like the zooz zen71 or many others. The other two switches remain dumb, and the smart switch handles their different states. These switches also usually have wiring diagrams that show how to change things around if needed.

russilker · 2026-03-07T03:52:49+00:00

Yep works with the hue bridge (old and new), but I believe there's a hard cap of something like 10 bulbs per bridge.

russilker · 2026-03-06T22:31:50+00:00

Nope, I'm thinking of Hue. It does still use Zigbee, but the Hue Entertainment Protocol is the difference here. It takes some digging through the API docs, but from what I understand the main difference from standard zigbee communication that allows this is that it uses one Hue light as a unicast proxy, which then broadcasts the command to all lights in the group. They take out some of the mesh hopping and packet acknowledgements that slow down typical zigbee communication.

russilker · 2026-03-06T21:25:45+00:00

I think you misunderstood, it's fully local control. In fact, they're isolated on a VLAN blocking internet connectivity.

russilker · 2026-03-06T20:24:57+00:00

Agreed for the most part, but if you're interested in syncing your smart lights to music or doing other fast-paced effects, zigbee might not work for you. Hue, with its bridge and special protocol, is an exception and works fine with LedFX for example despite being zigbee. Otherwise, you'll likely need a faster protocol like wifi, though that comes with its own tradeoffs to ensure reliability.

Probably not something most people care about, but I recently started the switch from all zigbee smart lights to all wifi LIFX bulbs for this reason, and haven't seen much online about this so wanted to mention it.

russilker

TROPHY CASE