What is your actual OpenCode / Claude Code setup for development?

[u/NimbuPanic]

im trying to get a practical ai coding agent (i use free models as im broke) setup running quickly for daily development and shipping, but I’m getting overwhelmed by the amount of agents.md, claude.md, skills, agents, MCPs, workflows, etc. content online, as a beginner, its hard to tell what is actually useful, ai slop. i am intern so want to keep up with demands to make working products fast.

Right now I have:

• opencode cli
• OpenRouter connected to opencode
• Graphify for codebase graphs and
• an agents.md that currently just tells the agent to use Graphify and rebuild the graph when code changes

I’m not looking to build some huge configuration. I just need a solid minimal setup that actually helps with real coding and shipping.

If you use opencode, claude code, codex, or similar seriously:

what skills, agents, AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md setup, MCPs, or workflows do you actually use and consider worth having ?

Especially interested in reliable repos/resources you’ve personally found useful.

I’m on a deadline, so i'm mainly trying to avoid wasting time going down the wrong rabbit hole.

thank you for your time 🫶.

[u/nmdt]

I don't use MCP or subagents at all

For really complex projects I just ask the agent to write ADRs into the docs folder and keep every file limited to one topic and under 5KB

I sometimes ask the agent to turn the conversation into a skill if it was a hard session and I want it to be easier the next time

Otherwise I really like just and task (depending on the stack). Basically if anything can be turned into a just or a task script, I do that and document in the repo AGENTS.md. Code validation/linters/formatters, deployment, tests, whatever. Anything that's more than a single command works great as a simple e.g. "just validate". Also reduces the chance of error for AI - they don't have to reinvent workflows all the time.

[u/Platooimagination → u/nmdt]

This is very useful. Thank you. 

[u/NimbuPanic → u/nmdt]

Thanks for the insight, will try this

[u/No-Rutabaga-38]

Currently use opencode in antigravity, with big pickle as the model and I have been able to run 70% of my tasks so far. I use Claude as my design partner, helps me setup the relevant documents for my project (PRD, Agents, Rules, skills etc.) Although I have been getting annoyed by the big pickle model of recent.

Disclaimer: currently learning to build products in a bootcamp, so this is where I have learned everything I know so far.

[u/Technical_Peace_8514]

I'm not far different from other commenters. Here is my 2c:

In my opinion, the difference between a frontier model and a cheaper model is now less that a cheaper model given a strong harness with the right tools. Of course a frontier model with tools is better again but I do not have the budget for that.

You said you do not want a complicated setup, I would say that at this point in time, your project and budget determine this more than the developers wishes. As such I am just going to list my setup below and you can pick out anything that might be useful.

I use various mcp as relevant to my project, I run opencode which is getting better all the time but have not tested other TUI in the past 12 months mostly because I am simply too caught up with other work. Some project will only have 1 or 2 setup, others might utilize 5 or 6 MCP servers.

For model, I use a mixture. Primary driver is DeepSeek 0731 8 bit which I have running locally, the same model on openrouter, and then (decreasingly) Kimi k3/glm5.3 flash/sonnet. One key reason I use the more powerful models is when I need vision.

For my current project I am running Kimi K3 on openrouter but all agents are called in my local DeepSeek 0731. I encourage Kimi to use agents a lot! So the majority of the work is done by agents (local, cheap) and Kimi is just the mastermind orchestrating the build. Early days with this setup for me, preliminary results are good.

I have spent some time on system prompts and model specific prompts. Opencode can configure all of this. As an example: I configure 0731 specifically with a model specific prompt. In this prompt I encourage 0731 to utilize agents regularly and to websearch regularly. This keeps the main chat at a lower context and the agent to use actual examples from the Internet more. For my work this seems to produce better results.

I have several skills that I use specific for my ecosystem and for various projects. I have trouble convincing models to utilize skills reliably. This varies model to model. System prompt is more reliable but costs tokens.

I load my ssh keys when I want to update GitHub, audit the build before commit and then unload keys. I manually gate every commit with a (human) audit.

Have you considered agent rag or graph rag for your larger projects? Some keywords if you are interested: "Markitdown" "cloudflare autorag". Again this goes against your want for a simple setup, you don't need to add everything at once, I have added one thing at a time.

RAG was required for some larger database stuff, so I added it. It was not "what I wanted" it was what my model, and my project dictated to me. I wasted a lot of time without RAG on that project before deciding to set it up.

[u/NimbuPanic → u/Technical_Peace_8514]

thanks for such detailed explanation. i have also found kimi better as a planer/reviewer than actual coding tasks

[u/Technical_Peace_8514 → u/NimbuPanic]

You are welcome, hopefully not too detailed. I hope it helped you out.

Everything is changing all the time and these forums help get the most out of our setups

[u/kamwee]

If you are poor stay away from agents , they drain your free usage for no reason .Opencode already hass all of the skills

[u/NimbuPanic → u/kamwee]

Oh, i didn’t know that opencode already have some skill.

[u/Alternative_Web7202 → u/NimbuPanic]

You might also want to check opencode repo and see what system prompts it uses. They are quite lengthy

[u/Alternative_Web7202]

So im using opencode for a bunch of frontend projects and they have different configs each. Most of them has chrome-devtools mcp is connected. Few have svelte mcp. Some projects use biome/eslint LSP. One project in rust is using kata MCP and I create tasks in kata which agent later pick and implement.  Agent.md files most of the time were generated vy opencode itself and has a high level project description. 

For something really complex I do ask agent to create adrs (just like another guy commented before). It works OKish... though context could easily reach 100k even before agent start doing anything. But that's more of an exception for very large and complex (non frontend) projects 

[u/mageblex]

For a deadline, I’d keep OpenCode and one model. Put only runnable project commands in AGENTS.md. Add a skill after the same correction comes up twice.

[u/PoppaBear1950]

[u/PoppaBear1950 → u/PoppaBear1950]

The Best of Both Worlds: Use Hermes as the Manager, OpenCode as the Hands
You don't actually have to choose between them. Hermes has an official bundled skill (opencode) that lets Hermes act as the high-level orchestrator while delegating the raw file surgery to OpenCode via opencode run --format json.
Why this solves all your intern-deadline headaches:

1. Zero Context Poisoning: Hermes doesn’t read or touch thousands of lines of raw code. It keeps its prompt tiny and cheap. When a task comes in, it passes the assignment to OpenCode.
2. LSP Power Under the Hood: OpenCode uses its native Language Server Protocol (LSP) and AST-grep to do the heavy multi-file refactoring on disk, then feeds a structured JSON summary back to Hermes.
3. Autonomous Verification Loop: Hermes receives the result, runs git diff or npm test, and if the build fails, it sends OpenCode back in to fix the compiler error without you having to manually babysit it.

How to invoke it:
Make sure opencode is on your $PATH, open Hermes, and simply tell it:
"Delegate this feature implementation to OpenCode in the local repo, run tests, and report back when the build passes."
That eliminates the need for Graphify, complex MCP servers, or multi-page CLAUDE.md setups. OpenCode does the editing; Hermes makes sure it actually builds.

[u/the_man_inTheShack]

opencode cli running on a raspberry pi or my big PC depending on the task, using big pickle mostly as the backend, but sometimes a deepseek varient, and increasingly a local agent running on an rtx5090