I looked at the most relevant coding harnesses that run locally on your machine. These are the six serious options right now: - Claude Code: Best Claude harness, but proprietary and without a free tier. - OpenAI Codex: Open-source OpenAI agent for CLI and VS Code. - Gemini CLI: Best free fallback, with up to 1,000 requests per day. - OpenCode: Best independent open-source option with BYOK and local models. - Cursor: Mature proprietary AI-first IDE with a free plan. - Devin Desktop: Formerly Windsurf, with multiple models and a limited free tier. My classification: - Primary tools: Claude Code and Codex - Best fallbacks: Gemini CLI and OpenCode My fallback stack would therefore be: Claude Code and Codex for daily work. Gemini CLI and OpenCode when I hit a usage limit. One important distinction: a free harness does not necessarily include free model usage. Gemini CLI currently offers the most attractive clearly documented free allowance.

Hey everyone, I'm Manuel, Founder/CTO of a stealth AI startup and AI & Software Engineering Expert at Brains&Bots. In Brains&Bots terms, I'm a Builder first and an Operator second. Systems and structure come naturally to me. Selling is the part I'm working on. I studied mathematics at TU Berlin and have spent around eight years working in software engineering and data science. Most of that work involved backend, data, and cloud systems that had to run reliably in production. Today I'm building an AI product with my two co-founders, and I'm responsible for the technical side. I'm especially interested in the engineering around AI models: architecture, context, data, evaluation, observability, and reliability. These are the parts that determine whether a prototype becomes useful software. It's also where my mathematics and engineering background come together. At Brains&Bots, I'll share what I know and what I'm learning through courses, architecture walkthroughs, practical examples, and post-mortems when something I built goes wrong. Vibe coding is part of it too. I'm interested in how we can keep the speed while still understanding the systems we build. I'm looking forward to meeting people who are building something and want to exchange ideas about the technical side. If you're working through an architecture or engineering question, feel free to reach out. Outside of work, I lift, ride my motorcycle, and spend time on my mountain bike.