[physix]

The dilemma I am facing is cost.

Consumer-grade subscriptions of the frontier models give you superb capabilities per dollar, them being heavily subsidized. But if you're working in an enterprise setting, that won't work. You need to upgrade, and that gets significantly more expensive.

Furthermore, basing the SDLC on leveraging the bargain subscriptions risks falling apart in the future, both from a cost perspective as well as the question of availability (e.g. Mythos).

So from a strategic perspective, going local on the LLM and still achieving great results with the right approach is very relevant.

[willisrocks]

Or you can get the best of both worlds--use frontier models to build a spec/plan, and use cheap models (open source or not) for implementation. Your max or team plan can go a lot further this way without giving up much for quality. Play with something like Superpowers to make this really approachable.