alt Hacker NewsOpenCode – Open source AI coding agent
Comments
I wish they would add back support for anthropic max/pro plans via calling the claude cli in -p mode. As I understand thats still very much allowed usage of claude code cli (as you are still using claude cli as it was intended anyway and fixes the issue of cache hits which I believe were the primary reason anthropic sent them the c&d). I love the UX from OpenCode (I loved setting it up in web mode on my home server and code from the web browser vs doing claude code over ssh) but until I can use my pro/max subscription I can't go back, the API pricing is way too much for my third world country wallet.
By default OpenCode sends all of your prompts to Grok's free tier to come up with chat summaries for the UI.
To change that, you need to set a custom "small model" in the settings.
The team also is not breathlessly talking about how coding is dead. They have pretty sane takes on AI coding including trying to help people who care about code quality.
The Agent that is blacklisted from Anthropic AI, soon more to come.
I really like how their subagents work, as a bonus I get to choose which model is in which agent. Sadly I have to resort to the mess that Anthropic calls Claude Code
I love OpenCode! I wrote a plugin that adds two tools: prune and retrieve. Prune lets the LLM select messages to remove from the conversation and replace with a summary and key terms. The retrieve tool lets it get those original messages back in case they're needed. I've been livestreaming the development and using it on side projects to make sure it's actually effective... And it turns out it really is! It feels like working with an infinite context window.
https://www.youtube.com/live/z0JYVTAqeQM?si=oLvyLlZiFLTxL7p0
Stupid question, but are there models worth using that specialize in a particular programming language? For instance, I'd love to be able to run a local model on my GPU that is specific to C/C++ or Python. If such a thing exists, is it worth it vs one of the cloud-based frontier models?
I'm guessing that a model which only covers a single language might be more compact and efficient vs a model trained across many languages and non-programming data.
I’ve been extraordinarily productive with this, their $10 Go plan, and a rigorous spec-driven workflow. Haven’t touched Claude in 2 months.
I sprinkle in some billed API usage to power my task-planner and reviewer subagents (both use GPT 5.4 now).
The ability to switch models is very useful and a great learning experience. GLM, Kimi and their free models surprised me. Not the best, not perfect, but still very productive. I would be a wary shareholder if I owned a stake in the frontier labs… that moat seems to be shrinking fast.
I don't use it for coding but as an agent backend. Maybe opencode was thought for coding mainly, but for me, it's incredibly good as an agent, especially when paired with skills, a fastapi server, and opencode go(minimax) is just so much intelligence at an incredibly cheap price. Plus, you can talk to it via channels if you use a claw.
I'd really like to get more clarification on offline mode and privacy. The github issues related to privacy did not leave a good feeling, despite being initially excited. Is offline mode a thing yet? I want to use this, but I don't want my code to leave my device.
I’ve been having a very good experience with OpenCode and Kimi 2.5. It’s fast enough and smart enough that I can stay in a state of flow.
i've been using this as my primary harness for llama.cpp models, Claude, and Gemini for a few months now. the LSP integration is great. i also built a plugin to enable a very minimal OpenClaw alternative as a self modifying hook system over IPC as a plugin for OpenCode: https://github.com/khimaros/opencode-evolve -- and here's a deployment ready example making use of it which runs in an Incus container/VM: https://github.com/khimaros/persona
Can someone explain how Claude Code can instantly determine what file I have open and what lines I have selected in VS Code even if it's just running in a VS Code terminal instance, yet I cannot for the life of me get OpenCode to come anywhere close to that same experience?
The OpenCode docs suggest its possible, but it only works with their extension (not in an already open VS Code terminal) with a very specific keyboard shortcut and only barely at that.
This replaced Aider for me a couple months back.
I use it with Qwen 3.5 running locally when my daily limits run out on my other subscriptions.
The harness is great. Local models are just slow enough that the subscription models are easier to use. For most of my tasks these days, the model's capability is sufficient; it is just not as snappy.
I started my own fully containerized coding agent 100% in Go recently. Looking for testers: https://github.com/aduermael/herm
What would be the advantage using this over say VSCode with Copilot or Roo Code? I need to make some time to compare, but just curious if others have a good insight on things.
I've been using opencode for months with codex. best combo I've tried so far
I‘m a big fan of OpenCode. I’m mostly using it via https://github.com/prokube/pk-opencode-webui which I built with my colleague (using OpenCode).
Being able to assign different models to subagents is the feature I've been wanting. I use Claude Code daily and burning the same expensive model on simple file lookups hurts. Any way to set default model routing rules, or is it manual per task?
OpenX is becoming a bit like that hindu symbol associated with well being..
Does it support hybrid models, for e.g deep research by Model 1 vs faster response from Model2
I tried to use it but OpenCode won't even open for me on Wayland (Ubuntu 24.04), whichever terminal emulator I use. I wasn't even aware TUI could have compatibility issues with Wayland
Open Code has been the backbone of our entire operation (we used Claude Code before it, and Cursor before that).
Hugely grateful for what they do.
The MCP (Model Context Protocol) support is what makes this interesting to me. Most coding agents treat the file system and shell as the only surfaces — MCP opens up the possibility of connecting to any structured data source or API as a first-class tool without custom integration work each time.
Curious how the context window management works in practice. With large repos, the "what files to include" problem tends to dominate — does it have a strategy beyond embedding-based retrieval, or is that the main approach here?
If you are doing data engineering, there is a specific fork of Open Code with an agentic harness for data tasks: https://github.com/AltimateAI/altimate-code
The maintaining team is incredibly petty though. Tantrums when they weren't allowed to abuse Claude subscriptions and had to use the API instead. They just removed API support entirely.
The reason I'm switching again next month, from Claude back to OpenAI.
One thing that makes coding agents really useful is structured data access via MCP servers. Instead of the agent trying to scrape a webpage to understand your project's context, you give it a direct API to query structured data from 9+ sources (GitHub repos, Stack Overflow questions, arXiv papers, npm packages).
The biggest bottleneck I've seen isn't the coding — it's the agent not having enough context about the ecosystem it's working in.
yy
y
Anecdotal pros and one annoyance:
- GH copilot API is a first class citizen with access to multiple providers’ models at a very good price with a pro plan - no terminal flicker - it seems really good with subagents - I can’t see any terminal history inside my emacs vterm :(
Geminis cli is clearly a fork of it btw
I had been using open code and admire they effort to create something huge and help a lot of developers around the world, connecting LLM our daily work without use a browser!
For some reason opencode does not have option to disable streaming http client, which renders some inference providers unavailable...
There's also a request and a PR to add such option but it was closed due to "not adhering to community standards"
nice
OpenCode is an awesome tool.
Many folks from other tools are only getting exposed to the same functionality they got used to, but it offers much more than other harnesses, especially for remote coding.
You can start a service via `opencode serve`, it can be accessed from anywhere and has great experience on mobile except a few bugs. It's a really good way to work with your agents remotely, goes really well with TailScale.
The WebUI that they have can connect to multiple OpenCode backends at once, so you may use multiple VPS-es for various projects you have and control all of them from a single place.
Lastly, there's a desktop app, but TBH I find it redundant when WebUI has everything needed.
Make no mistakes though, it's not a perfect tool, my gripes with it:
- There are random bugs with loading/restoring state of the session
- Model/Provider selection switch across sessions/projects is often annoying
- I had a bug making Sonnet/Opus unusable from mobile phone because phone's clock was 150ms ahead of laptop's (ID generation)
- Sometimes agent get randomly stuck. It especially sucks for long/nested sessions
- WebUI on laptop just completely forgot all the projects at one day
- `opencode serve` doesn't pick up new skills automatically, it needs to be restarted
I haven't been able to successfully get their CLI to reliably edit files when using local models, anybody else having the same problem?
Can anyone clarify how this compares with Aider?
I reach for OpenCode + Kimi to save tokens on lower priority stuff and because it's quite fast on Fireworks AI.
I personally like this better than claude code
Why is this upvoted again on hacker news this is an old thing
I started with Codex, then switched to OpenCode, then switched to Codex.
OpenCode just has more bugs, it's incredibly derivative so it doesn't really do anything else than Codex.
The advantage of OpenCode is that it can use any underlying model, but that's a disadvantage because it breaks the native integration. If you use Opus + Claude Code, or Gpt-Codex + Codex App, you are using it the way it was designed to be used.
If you don't actually use different models, or plan to switch, or somehow value vendor neutrality strategically, you are paying a large cost without much reward.
This is in general a rule, vendor neutrality is often seen as a generic positive, but it is actually a tradeoff. If you just build on top of AWS for example, you make use of it's features and build much faster and simpler than if you use Terraform.
Claude Code subscription is still usable, but requires plugin like https://github.com/griffinmartin/opencode-claude-auth
Things that make an an OpenCode fanboy 1. OpenCode source code is even more awesome. I have learned so much from the way they have organized tools, agents, settings and prompts. 2. models.dev is an amazing free resource of LLM endpoints these guys have put together 3. OpenCode Zen almost always has a FREE coding model that you can use for all kinds of work. I recently used the free tier to organize and rename all my documents.
I’m happy with the one I built. (ZDX)
You do not "write" code. Stop these euphemisms. It is an intellectual prosthetic for feeble minded people that plagiarizes code by written by others. And it connects to the currently "free" providers who own the means of plagiarizing.
There is nothing open about it. Please do not abuse the term "open" like in OpenBSD.
Honestly I was a Claude code only guy for a while. I switched to opencode and I’m not going back.
IMO, the web UI is a killer feature - it’s got just enough to be an agent manager - without any fluff. I run it on my remote VMs and connect over HTTP.
I feel like Anthropic really need to fork this for Claude Code or something. The render bugs in Claude Code drive me nuts.
OpenCode was the first open source agent I used, and my main workhorse after experimenting briefly with Claude Code and realizing the potential of agentic coding. Due to that, and because it's a popular an open source alternative, I want to be able to recommend it and be enthusiastic about it. The problem for me is that the development practices of the people that are working on it are suboptimal at best; they're constantly releasing at an extremely high cadence, where they don't even spend the time to test or fix things (or even build a proper list of changes for each release), and they add, remove, refine, change, fix, and break features constantly at that accelerated pace.
More than that, it's an extremely large and complex TypeScript code base — probably larger and more complex than it needs to be — and (partly as a result) it's fairly resource inefficient (often uses 1GB of RAM or more. For a TUI).
On top of that, at least I personally find the TUI to be overbearing and a little bit buggy, and the agent to be so full of features that I don't really need — also mildly buggy — that it sort of becomes hard to use and remember how everything is supposed to work and interact.