opencode-free-models
OpenCode Free Models
Concept of the skill
What it is: A cost-routing discipline for free and cheap agent models — deciding which open/open-weight model (and which free-tier lane) a given piece of work should run on, where each model's quality ceiling sits, and when the same work must escalate to a frontier model instead.
Mental model: Every task has a quality bar; every model has a quality ceiling and a cost. Cost-routing matches the cheapest model whose ceiling clears the task's bar, then escalates only on a concrete signal (looping, contradiction, low confidence, or the work crossing into reasoning/judgment). Free is the default lane only for work whose bar a competent open-weight model already clears.
Why it exists: Premium model capacity is finite and expensive; a large share of agent work (mechanical edits, bulk classification, high-volume triage) does not need a frontier model. Routing that work to a free/cheap model preserves premium capacity for work that genuinely needs it — but only if the ceiling/bar match is made honestly, not by reflex.
What it is NOT: It is not "always use the cheapest model" — that ignores the quality ceiling and silently corrupts work whose output is the quality bar. It is not the runtime (how to invoke a model) and not the loop (how to retry/claim). It is the per-task model choice.
Adjacent concepts: the runtime that reaches the model; the quality bar a task imposes; a model's quality ceiling and throughput; the escalation signal that promotes work to a frontier model.
One-line analogy: It is choosing the right gear for the grade — flat ground takes the cheap, fast gear; a steep climb needs the powerful one, and forcing the climb in the cheap gear strips the chain.
Common misconception: That a free model is interchangeable with a frontier model if you just retry enough — or, inversely, that free models are toys. Both are wrong: free open-weight models clear a real, sizeable band of work, but their ceiling is real, and pushing quality-creating or quality-judging work onto them produces confident garbage that poisons everything downstream.