Comment by Schiendelman
13 hours ago
To answer the question in your first sentence - because it's VERY computationally (ha) expensive as a human being to keep up with all the options. It's also very hard to figure out how to run a model like this. There's no installer. If you really really care, which 99% of people do not, you have to google a guide, and then find out it's out of date...
I've tried a number of these, and the learning curve is very steep compared to "install Claude Code and pay $100/mo". There is no way saving me $50/month matters compared to figuring that out.
But it just works with Claude Code? They have a guide on their website.
https://docs.z.ai/devpack/tool/claude
Here's my setup. I add this to my .bashrc
export ZAI_API_KEY="your_key_here"
alias claudez='ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN="$ZAI_API_KEY" ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL="https://api.z.ai/api/anthropic" ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_OPUS_MODEL="glm-5.2[1m]" ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_SONNET_MODEL="glm-4.7" ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_HAIKU_MODEL="glm-4.7" claude'
Then I just run claudez
pro tip the same thing works with deepseek https://api-docs.deepseek.com/guides/anthropic_api
Even more pro tip: Claude Code can set this up for you haha
Sure, I'm not saying I, a software engineer, cannot do this. I'm saying it's significant onboarding friction.
Unless this were a massive differentiator, people aren't going to be "talking about it" the way GP suggests!
You're seriously suggesting that setting up opencode or tweaking your claude code config or etc is too much trouble to be worth saving $50 /mo? That's absurd. Doubly so when the audience in question is already using LLMs so ... just ask your existing LLM for help if it seems daunting.
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> it's significant onboarding friction.
It's crazy that apparently writing software without knowing how to edit a single config file is normal now.
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Not really, you can literally have Claude set it up for you.
The friction is near 0 when you can ask another LLM to set it up for you.
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> There's no installer.
There's ZCode (https://zcode.z.ai). Which is like the Codex App.
That's as "easy" as it is for non-devs that you're complaining about.
How does it compare to OpenCode? I already have too many LLM CLIs installed :(
I'm not complaining about anything. I'm answering a question.
It's also very hard to figure out how to run a model like this. There's no installer.
Yes, there is. It's called Claude Code. Point it at the HuggingFace URL and say "Download these weights and build whatever is needed to run them, then test the model."
I really miss the time when people thought that the idea of someone telling an un-sandboxed AI "do whatever is needed to X" was unrealistically stupid.
Skill issue
(In all seriousness, I agree this is a problem. That capability is too powerful not to take advantage of, though. Nobody needs to struggle with this sort of thing anymore, but yes, obviously, it should happen in a VM or at least a container.)
install opencode, then either pay $10 for their plan, or add an openrouter api key.
I agree with this.
I'd pay for an out of the box solution. i.e. an Installer with updates