The Real Cost Argument
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The Real Cost Argument
The API cost difference between Claude Sonnet and a local model is significant. If you’re writing documentation, commit messages, or email responses regularly, the local model handles the bulk of the tokens and Claude handles the quality pass. Over a month of daily development work, that’s a meaningful reduction.
The skill is also insurance against bad local model output. The constraint is explicit: “ALWAYS review local LLM output before presenting to user. NEVER present unrefined local LLM output as final.” Claude acts as the filter. If the local draft is poor quality, Claude regenerates rather than refines.