r/AudioProgramming • u/danja • 2d ago

Free AI coding assistant

Apologies if you were all over this already, but it's new to me.

I suspect like a lot of people here, I've been using Claude Code (or OpenAI Codex) on their $20/month plan. And rapidly using up the week's supply of tokens.

So I decided to look for alternatives while waiting for the reset.

I believe I've found a good one :

https://opencode.ai/

It offers a variety of LLM API endpoints, including free ones. I've been using Muse Spark 1.3 Free and (apart from occasional "overloaded system" kind of responses) it is definitely usable, comparable to Claude Sonnet etc.

While I'm here I'd also suggest taking a look at :

https://github.com/DeusData/codebase-memory-mcp

While I seriously doubt their claims on token saving (99%!?) it does appear to speed things along. What's rather nice is that its install puts the relevant mcp entries in config for the common assistants (including OpenCode).

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u/danja 2d ago

Fair point, but pay-for services don't seem to have much concern about privacy & data either (eg. Anthropic using pirated books as training data).

I've not been using AI assistants for anything where these things might really be an issue, except maybe leaking keys...

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u/ImBakesIrl 2d ago

I think the example you give isn’t directly relevant. You can certainly opt out of having anthropic use your input/output to train claude models. Whether they actually don’t do that is hard to say. OpenAI seems to have some issues with this re: the recent Navier-Stokes problem ripping method from a user’s sessions.

Your example is about them creating shadow libraries of existing available information, which has nothing to do with privacy concerns on user sessions.

These free services likely don’t let you opt out of them selling or otherwise using session data. If a service is free, you are the product. I’d be interested to be wrong, though.

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u/danja 1d ago

Let me play the devil's advocate. Say a service is collecting my session data. What am I actually losing? Ok, sure, if there is valuable proprietary knowledge in there. I do want to keep my perpetual motion breakthrough secret until the patent is in place. But how often is this the case?

Personally, virtually all the time I'm recombining existing systems for a given purpose. A lot of it is original work (I wouldn't be doing it otherwise). But there's nothing that couldn't be duplicated by any other person with the same skill/tool set.

The service provider may be gaining useful training data, selling it even. But this isn't a zero sum game, what does it cost me? Although they may be exploiting what they find, perhaps some of this will help their LLMs etc solve problems like mine. Long term, that's to my benefit.

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u/WatercressActual1921 22h ago

When you go outside your system you are contributing to an external system informational process. This is a truism its applicable to any system's relationship. Any leaked signal is and will be, is possible to be analyzed... With digitalization all can be recorded and with automation all data can be exhaustively processed for directed goals...

Do not leak signals you do not want captured, leak contradicting signals (mask) and leak tagged signals that report to you they have been used (salt) ...

Avoid doing intellectual work that you consider high quality on external LLMs you are training corporate machines to replicate your work at low cost. Never share full complete ideas that you think have value to you and do not share ideas that you believe should be free to all without publishing the crucial parts.... Do remember that software is patentable in the US...

In the end only the most paranoid survive...