hello 👋

i’m nodoka and i like to write for fun!

coding agents are everywhere. but most of them depend on cloud GPUs and paid APIs. this lead me to wonder if i can use my macbook to run a useful coding model locally for free.

i recently upgraded from an M1 pro (2020) to an M5 pro (2026), so this seemed like a good opportunity to test the specs of this as well. my goals were:

• run a coding model locally
• test the prompt pre-fill performance of the M5
• see if this could support a CLI-first coding workflow

i also eventually want to move towards complete cli coding (not ide) so this is another step i am taking towards this goal.

• my stack 🤓
• updates

choosing a model

if the goal is to run a coding model locally, the first practical question is simple:

which model should i try? many models claim to be good at coding, but most of them are:

• too large to run on a laptop