I mostly work on problems at the intersection of manufacturing, mechatronic design, electronics, software and physics. So I'm not really building software per-se which likely accounts for the probably slightly weird choices here.

1. Claude Max (upsold me as of today); generally Sonnet 5.5 with the occasional Fable 5.1 when it gets stuck or I am executing a high value step; and Perplexity Pro (legacy).

2. Mostly local voice-to-text w/Parakeet Unified EN 0.6B via Handy[0] (awesome; use it!). Not for coding, but for note taking, AI interfacing, and general typing reduction and RSI avoidance.

3. None. I tried Pi and after much kerfuffle I don't like any of the harness interfaces. I find the type of work I do they are not very useful, because I often switch between variant approaches, planning, data, and don't want unrestrained context bloat.

4. No.

5. No.

I would add that I am very interested in obtaining good enough hardware to run this level of model locally at any pace, believe Qwen is basically there but too slow locally to use as a daily driver on my current rig, and can see myself making that investment in single digit years. Not right now, the hardware is overpriced for what it is versus venture funded cloud AI subsidies.

[0] https://handy.computer/