OP mentioned a local LLM rig plus a rather complex setup from what I understood (I could be wrong).

Also, most of the lower end models aren't that good. At this point you can take an experienced dev and start implementing an app using any mature stack (I'm talking even about stuff like Ada, so not just C/C++, JS, etc) on any mainstream platform (big 3 desktop + big 2 mobile + web) and you can get quite far with Claude Code. By far I mean you'll at least do the 80% really quickly, at which point the "experienced dev" needs to take over. I think you can even get 95% of the way there. And that's with a stack that the dev is unfamiliar with at the start.

Claude code has aggressive limits on $18/month plan. You can get much farther with Minimax 2.1 or Qwen3 on the same amount of money. I have noticed opus is much better in some scenarios but Minimax and Q3 are not as bad or behind. Or my setup is now too used to the quirks of those models, who knows. I am using Claude Haiku as small model anyway, just not using Opus because it burns credits very quickly.