Author: com

opencode’n

kicking myself a little bit for ignoring opencode for so long… finally dove in and digging it all. Go is an affordable way to reach various models easily, and I’m a huge fan of the free models.

Space Bunny has been pretty good. I asked it what it was… it says it’s Claude 🤣. Throwing random projects at various free models and seeing how it all goes.

Big Pickle was my first exploration into the free models and was immediately impressed by the speed and output. coupled with the opencode harness – good times. On my windows machine opencode running in git bash seemed to run the computer hot, but on my Macs – all good. The web interface for opencode is pretty nice; some rough edges but overall great. I like having different projects and models running in different ways so slightly easier for context switching.

overall opencode has quickly become the side driver along with codex gaining more where I’m mainly using Claude Code for work.

point is, lots of good stuff on the free model if you can swing it.

👋

Døn

October 5, 2026
burning 5 hr codex windows in 40 minutes

last couple weeks using the new chatgpt models e.g., Astra (at varying efforts) and also 5.6 family seems to be burning my little ol codex 5 hr limit quicker than usual. had some resets banked so used those. I typically want to be maxed on effort depending on the task, so of course that is a factor here using more in general.

just feels like I used to get more.

this weekend I hit it the cap three times… really wanted some work to finish; 40-60 minutes generally, or quicker if ya go Astra ultra mode which is good stuff.

all good, all part of it and I was able to pivot elsewhere, notably into opencode.

have fun burning.

👋

Døn

September 13, 2026
opencode + opencode go. start
been lagging here as I’ve been following opencode for awhile now, but not using their products. that changed today – now running opencode with the go subscription.

so far, its one of the easiest ways for me to get an easy tailored list of models that is currently at a great price.

jumped on the deepseek 4.1 flash train that I’ve been seeing around lately, and I will say its snappy.

opencode is refreshing. I’ve been off and on trying out different TUI/CLI etc… tooling and the more I’m in opencode the more I want to adjust to be daily driver. kicking myself for not trying sooner but all good.

reminding myself for future notes
- loop / workflows / agent teams
- skills and agents (open code reads the existing ones I have which was great to see int he docs)
- my own mini model experiments – same prompt across different models.
👋

Døn
September 13, 2026
fable 5.1, cool cool and token hungry

claude fable 5.1 has been out a few days now. while I haven’t been full-on (usually switching between Opus/Sonnet 5, I have experimented in situations where I know I may burn up a session limit; and I did. didn’t quite seem like the juice worth the squeeze 🍊 developing thoughts … I did hear it should be less wordy, and generally has been in my experience.

September 5, 2026
claud’n and codex’n and all the ai’s eryday
as a builder, I have various projects going all the time and the all-the-time driver is claude, with chatgpt/codex creeping up in usage, and various other models that I’ll write about later.

every week – shoot – nearly everyday there is updates and improvements, so embracing the new and the change with these tools is the way to go. yes its all about tokens, and that continues to ramp up exponentially as the frontier models burn thru them like high-test gasoline.

how do I track everything in the age of various contexts / full-stacking / solo-builder-prenuering?

ai

😆

all jokes aside, a handful of the thing I do
- plan everything – like really – work thru initial idea by creating document(s) of what you are doing. I built my scaffolding grovv-stack to walk me thru my idea and build out a brief, product spec, tech spec, and further documents to lay foundations.
- use an issue/item tracker of some-kind – text file in the repository, GitHub issues, linear, whatever … make sure you can track things per project.
- then of course connect your model of choice to that tracker. chat to go thru your project to summarize status, re-focus priorities, or any way you work best.
- I have agents and skills that make sure to keep documentation & the tracker up-to-date, and in some cases also have a simple HTML “board” listing out everything – including a focus and blocker list. will have to share some of this in future post
sounds simple, but it goes a long way to have your knowledge graph documented instead of just figuring it out as you go (whatever works best for you tho, I engineer.

have fun

👋

Døn
August 10, 2026
mistral vibe is a good vibe

back to going down journeys of ai cli tools, this weekend was mistrals vibe. I’ve been a long time occasional user of mistrals le chat (now just “vibe” and had to try out the CLI.

simply put, good vibes. affordable. quick.

for this post, I just focused on adapting my grovv-stack “harness” for vibe, and circle back to the codex also since I’ve been running that cli lately also as I’ve been burning thru my claude max 20x plan with fable, which with opus 5 now its “cheaper” / more work for the usage.

I mean yes it’s nothing “complex” copy/pasting (to be unfair) of the existing claude setup, but I just really liked that table above – even if not the most efficient way of handling my harness which I have since corrected. reviewing the PR, did ok. (again just analyzing / adapting stuff) the overall flow of the cli is really what I’m referring to. will see once I have it do more “complex” things.

I think this will be creeping into my daily driver usage, and just thinking about having a docker setup already with everything or getting back into sprites.dev again b/c ya know you gotta sandbox. 🏖️

vibe on.

👋

Døn

July 26, 2026
Opus 5 and I tackool things.

opus 5 has been good, but seems to have forgotten how to spell a couple times. I think it meant “tackle” and said “tackool” … 🤔

agi is so coming

👋

Døn

July 25, 2026
claude status would be a cool shirt

checkout that nice colorway… feels very 1970’s comfy couch.

switching over to another model … shatgpt or something.

👋

Døn

July 24, 2026
quick intro to grovv – my builder stack

grovv (pronounced grow) at grovv.ai is now live showcasing my build ecosystem. My sorta harness is now live via GitHub and as a Claude plugin. I run it on everything. Keeping it “simple” and improving where I can. It’s an opinionated approach for the way I’m currently building all of my grovv projects. Typescript, node, next, Postgres’s (Supabase or neon) and handful of other things I’ve been getting into as I build out a loose loop approach — because let’s be honest the latest frontier models are token burners and will still go off the rails if you don’t watch em.

nothing novel here, just a dude building.

👋

July 19, 2026
fable 5. It’s cool, def thinks a lot / token burn

I was most excited about getting features like /workflow /goal and essentially running “deep complex work” and of course being on the loop train. But there is something to be said for knowing how a model behaves and what the output you can expect. Don’t get me wrong, Fable 5 has been pushing out some work for me, but I’m not totally sold on it being so awesome / mind-blowing crazy.

of course I ran thru my weekly usage in a couple days when it came back to Claude after being grounded by the US government… and I couldn’t help spinning up sessions to work on projects I had stalled on to see how it would go…

no real point to be made here – it’s done some good stuff for me, but I think also because I’ve been improving my harness and implementing / riding the whole loop train 🚂 which has been more of a step change than the model itself.

Will share my “grovv-stack” setup soon and how I’ve been loopin’

👋🚂

Døn

July 8, 2026