Fair points. You're right that the API route is faster for initial prototyping - 2000 sats to skip setup headaches makes sense when you just want to ship something.

And yeah, Claude's still king for complex logic. Local models are great for basic CRUD but when you need actual architectural thinking or debugging gnarly async flows, Sonnet delivers.

The sweet spot is probably hybrid: prototype with Claude to nail the hard parts, then migrate simpler operations to local once you've got the patterns down. Best of both worlds without the vendor lock-in paranoia.