For the longest time, I've been trying to figure out a way to "survive" in this new AI age without having to fork over a ton of money just to keep up. I've tried using local models via Ollama, and while they definitely work to a degree, they're (unsurprisingly) not as good as the big model providers.
The local models tend to
- Forget what they're doing
- Struggle to break larger tasks into smaller ones
- Lose focus easily
- Have weaker coding performance
- Drift over longer sessions
So to improve the reliability of fully local, smaller models (and to keep all my data local and in my own network), I created Coyote.
It's a local-first, batteries-included command line tool and runtime for building and running LLM workflows locally. It's model agnostic and supports things like
- Agents and agent delegation
- Roles/personas
- MCP Servers
- RAG
- Custom tools
- Macros
- Workflow Scripting
A lot of the features it supports are specifically designed to compensate for weaknesses in smaller local models. For example:
- Auto continuation to keep pushing models to completion instead of stopping halfway through problems
- Parallel agent delegation so tasks can be split into smaller, focused scopes
- Workflow-based execution ("If this, do that") for building more reliable and repeatable automations
It also supports the major cloud providers if you want them (which definitely helped while testing π), but my long-term goal is simple:
Get as close as possible to Claude Code-style reliability using fully local models.
I'm always open to feedback, questions, or ideas.
I'm a little confused about this thing's use case.
What does it do differently/better than OpenCode ?
OpenCode is specific to coding workflows. Loki is built to be a general LLM runtine/workflow engine for any problem domain, not just code. An example use I have for it is a cron job that runs at boot to
Opencode isn't very fun to set up with local LLMs and I've had issues with tool calling, but it's very doable! That said, OpenCode is my go-to, absolutely love it compared to all alternatives I've tried
When it comes to writing code, OpenCode is my go-to as well. It's my ultimate benchmark for how well optimized and reliable I can make local models function in Loki.
Opencode needs like 10k tokens just to get started
That's only if you use the default
Buildagent with the built-in prompt (https://github.com/anomalyco/opencode/blob/dev/packages/opencode/src/session/prompt/default.txt), and yes it is quite large.It's trivial to create custom agents in
opencode.jsonwith custom prompts, tools, whatever..For example I have created a
Personalagent which handles menial stuff such as searching/editing my notes, appointments, tasks... with a restricted set of tools and skills.The single most important change I made is only allowing the
localprovider in the config, which disables all cloud providers. IMHO this should be the default but I'm not complaining. It's the best open-source harness I've tried so far. I want to try pi.dev someday (quite minimal, needs a good amount of setup and tuning).I also argue that some local models actually behave much better with a semi-large system prompt (qwen 3.6 for example tends to lose itself in reasoning if you only use the default
You are a helpful assistantsystem prompt and a basicSay hiuser prompt - opencode-like large system prompts fixes this; even if you lose some time for initial prompt loading)Is that included in the token & cost counter? I haven't really noticed that yet. It's just the most reliable and best harness i've yet used. For context i've only otherwise tried claude, gemini, and aider. More if you count non cli apps
Yes of course. It's all tools and skills and system stuff
But 10k isn't much in the grand scope. But it can be a big hurdle if you want to use opencode with local small models
Haven't configured much beyond this but what's wrong with
ollama launch opencode <model>? Haven't had an issue yet.yo... what? i was configuring json files n shit with custom sources. granted i used lmstudio as ollama doesn't support mlx models or something for mac. This is definitely the easy way if you're using ollama.
Ditto. I don't see how this is different/better from existing harnesses such as Opencode, Pi, and even "commercial" open source offerings such as the CLIs for Codex, Copilot, and Gemini, especially once tricked out with plugins and extensions.