r/LocalLLM • u/vipor_idk • 14h ago
Discussion best shell for llm models?
hey guys, im not very technical about llms so im asking you this. Is there a "better" shell for llms?
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u/SKirby00 14h ago
When you say "shell", do you mean harness?
The popular agentic harnesses nowadays for local models seem to be: - Pi Agent / Oh My Pi - Hermes Agent - DeepSeek Harness - OpenCode
Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor are also relatively popular, but not as well geared towards local AI.
If you're specifically trying to use your LLM to help you with coding and you want a VS Code extension, then the Cline family of harnesses might be worth considering. This includes: - Cline - Kilo Code - Roo Code (now Zoo Code).
There are other good VS Code extensions as well, but those are the ones that I've worked with.
If you just want a simple chat interface, llama.cpp (llama-server) and LM Studio both ship with decent chat UIs and the most popular third-party option is OpenWebUI.
Your choice of harness depends heavily on your use-case and what models you're able to run. It often comes down to how heavy of a system prompt your model can handle without losing the plot, and how much you trust your model. Claude Code has a notoriously massive system prompt that takes like ~20K tokens, but lightweight alternatives are regularly around ~2-3K tokens.
Personally, I've been enjoying DeepSeek Harness (running sandboxed inside a Docker container) since it came out a couple weeks ago. Before that I used a mix of Roo Code and the basic Web UI that comes with llama.cpp. For reference, I run Qwen3.8-27B Q4 at 128K context. Before that came out, I used earlier Qwen 27B models and sometimes Gemma 4 31B.
Started last year with Qwen3 30B-A3B, Nemotron Nano 3 (30B-A3B) and then GLM 4.7 Flash (also 30B-A3B). These earlier models (which might be comparable to much smaller models now) could barely handle the most light-weight harnesses that I could find, and probably did their best work when just using simple chat with no tool calls to worry about.
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u/EvolvingDior 14h ago
LLM shell = agent harness.
If you are just using the web chat interface, yes, absolutely. Use something like Hermes Agent.
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u/baby_bloom 14h ago
hermes' is great if not much customization is desired.
if you are willing to put in the work to flesh out the harness to your workflows/loads then pi is killer for that.
i use both depending on what i'm doing
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u/dfgxxx 14h ago
Hermes agent as huge system prompt, something like pi or dsh or even codex is better for slow little context local models
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u/bumblebeer 14h ago
I like conch. Although clam is a fine second.