[abalashov]

I switched to exclusively Chinese models, mostly Kimi, many months ago. I'll still ask Claude questions that require ambitious real-time web search / worldly knowledge, but for just about anything else, the Chinese models have been so good that I haven't looked back.

[mattstir]

I think that those two statements are somewhat contradictory of one another. But in any case, I'm curious about your decision to still use Claude for some questions. Do you find the Chinese models have less worldly knowledge, and if so in what categories? Genuinely curious, I haven't had a chance to try them out very much.

[abalashov]

My use of "worldly knowledge" might have been sloppy. I really meant "real-time worldly knowledge".

The American chatbot apps are just very polished on live web search and tool use, and the models are very eager to do it. Chinese models are perfectly capable of that, but you need to bring your own MCPs (at least, if you want anything beyond WebFetch) and steer the model toward greater eagerness to use them.

[trollbridge]

I did the same, although last week we switched back to GPT-5.6 since OpenAI is giving the farm away pricing/reset wise.