Comment by skeledrew
6 hours ago
All that keeps jumping out at me is how they've set it to refuse giving users thinking tokens and prompts for full reasoning in output. Just drives me further away; I may not stop using Claude completely for now, but I'll be moving even more of my primary workload to Chinese providers. That's where openness and freedom is now at.
> All that keeps jumping out at me is how they've set it to refuse giving users thinking tokens and prompts for full reasoning in output
I keep seeing comments added to code, which reads like reasoning output instead of meaningful words. I see this behavior for both OpenAI and Anthropic models (for several harnesses as well).
But this is a sample of one. And I may be in a situation where I'm more negative to the output from LLMs in general.
What Chinese models/providers are you using for this? I'm hitting Claude's weekly limits much sooner than I used to with roughly the same workload, so I'm interested in trying alternatives, especially ones with strong coding/agentic performance.
> hitting Claude's weekly limits much sooner than I used to with roughly the same workload,
Anthropic had a +50% weekly tokens promotion since April (!) which just ran out last weekend after getting multiple extensions.
I've been feeling that too,and I suspect that's the true reason why they released opus 5.5 at a discount
Get yourself an OpenCode Go subscription and give DeepSeek Flash 4.1 a shot.
A common tactic is to used a big brain model like Opus for planning and reviewing, and a cheaper model for execution.
While it's a common tactic, and I'd vouch for it if you don't really know what you want to code in fact, but if you know what you want to get out of it, I haven't found anything I'd need opus 5.5 for instead of deepseek-flash (flash v4.1 hosted via platform.deepseek.com)
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In my experience that tactic works well if the codebase is limited in size, or well maintained and separated. Otherwise I do notice a difference also letting fable do the execution, not just the planning for complex tasks.
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Been using DeepSeek Flash 4.0 and 4.1 for some random sideprojects via OC GO, its a great deal and for non-corporate work it's really great!
Don't use opus 5.5 at high. Medium is about as good as 5.0 was at high.
z.ai with zcode. it works around the clock for me off of my redmine queue
I have tried GLM on a subscription, and also DeepSeek and MiMo using API directly. MiMo in particular is extremely cheap.
For regular software development they have been pretty great.
pi+astra for me. Does absolute wonders. When openai starts to squeeze it's chinese models all the way
they have started to squeeze, with gpt-6 i'm getting waaaay less value out of the subscription. Used to be thousands of dollars a reset and it's down to a few hundred
The whole notion of seat-based pricing seems wrong to me as well.
Seat-based pricing just includes a certain amount of token usage at a discount for buying in "bulk" (and risking not using all your usage). You can still pay the API token-based rates if you really want to; they won't stop you from doing that.
Can you elaborate?
Crazy how tables have turned. Life seems surreal since 2020.
They may have better and more open weight models but they sure don't have our western understanding of individual freedom. Go try out their first and second amendment protections, or try the fifth? I'm sure we can find more but mostly, when the state needs the tech there won't be an Anthropic-like appeal against overstepping.
What Chinese provider would you use that is on par with Claude code?
Since Claude Code is a harness that can be made to work with (pretty much?) any model, the answer to the question you have asked is: Claude Code
Non-pedantic answer: I totally agree with you. Opus 5.5 is totally knocking it out of the park IMO.
Zoo Code is so much better than CC that to me even using similar models I go for CC for simpler things and ZC for larger work.
First I've heard of "Zoo Code", on HN or anywhere else - and I pay attention. Got links to share, making the case for it?
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If you're not a noob and you know what you're doing then I can't recommend DeepSeek v4.1 Flash (set to high) enough.
Yeah I've already been using it for some implementation tasks. Works really well given the cost.
What's special it that noobs shouldn't use it?
Noobs are burning tokens like "make me an app that does this" whereas an experienced engineer would go with certain language, framework and architecture in mind.
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In general the weaker the model the more skill you need to drive it (at least if you care about quality).
It is not as self thinking, you need to be more detailed and accurate with the prompts.
I think we need more of these issues to frustrate people.
There is a fundamental incompatibility between “safe AI” and compliant AI.
This is an issue when it’s people, Enron or Madoff for example.
I guess it’s : “safe AI, capable AI, and obedient A. Pick one “
Ironic, especially given 100 hundred years of Hollywood proaganda telling the west that the US are the center of freedom.
Which was and is true to some extent.
And don't get me wrong, China is a dictatorship, and a tyranny for some.
But then again, the west is a tyranny for some.
That's how the cycles happen. China realizes they could use a little more freedom and US realizes that they could do with a little less. The emerging/shrinking middle class of both countries also moves the sweet spot.
Absolutely!
Doesn't make it any less amusing from the outside, to see the US struggle with their identity. (It's most always just a struggle when freedom becomes less)
Yeah its annoying. I need to pay for thinking, but I can't see it :/
I mean there is a good reason for that, no? Distillation is an issue.
Is distillation an issue that stops you from picking a model, while scraping/torrenting as much of the Internet as possible is fine?
It's not like Anthropic and OAI have clean hands, especially as they're now racing each other to appear the most dangerous to civilization.
As a paying user, I expect to get what I'm paying for. I'm paying for thinking tokens, so I should be getting them, and in a way that I can actually read if/when I want without relying on any proprietary tools. I have no interest in being locked in.
Not an issue for me, the end user.
Ha, fair.