You can use qwen 3.5 for genuinely useful stuff without worrying about subscriptions and tokens. The 35b model works well on my Mac Studio and does all kinds of menial tasks so I can use my subscriptions for more important or complex things. I don’t think it’ll be long until models comparable to Sonnet today will run on my machine.

I have no idea what the frontier will look like in a few years but I don’t doubt local models like qwen will still be a staple of my workflows.

And for what it’s worth, there are people out there who lose their sawing ability because a safety brake totals their blade and needs to be replaced for something like $100. Sometimes we pay extra for features we value. We can always pull out the hand tools if we have to. In the mean time, make hay I guess.

I’m a professional so I don’t mind paying for tools.

local models exist