Can Qwen 3.8 running on your laptop really replace Claude Opus for Agentic coding?
Originally published at deepu.tech . When the whole AI coding frenzy started, I was still skeptical. Like most tech enthusiasts, I tried it but wasn't that impressed by the models' coding capabilities back then. I still used them, but mostly as an autocomplete tool in VS Code. This all changed for me with Opus 4.6 on Claude Code. That was the first time I felt like the model was actually more…
This report details the author's personal experience with running the Qwen 3.8 model on their laptop and comparing its performance to the Claude Opus model for agentic coding tasks. The author initially used Claude Opus 4.6 for coding, but after trying Qwen 3.8 27b, they found it to be a much more efficient and capable model. Although Qwen 3.8 was slower with long prefill times, the author found it suitable for overnight tasks and appreciated its ability to complete complex coding tasks with minimal human intervention.
The author then explored Qwen 3.8 Flash Next, which offered improved speed and overall performance, matching the quality of Opus 4.8. The author concludes by praising the Chinese labs for making these powerful models open source and accessible to run on consumer-grade hardware, ultimately leading to a greener and more energy-efficient coding experience.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
