Latest stories
All guides →Why your stack is choking — the model doesn't matter as much as the harness
Leaderboards keep moving. On a local box the bottleneck is usually the harness — MCP, skills, Obsidian, and memory — not whichever weights dropped this week.
AI is here. Most strategies still act like it isn't.
Chat demos and stalled pilots aren't transformation. How to treat AI as operating capacity—with owners, production paths, and a better ROI question than headcount.
You're overpaying for AI chat — here's the easy fix
Skip the jargon. What an AI model router actually does, why casual chat shouldn't hit a frontier model, and how Trash Panda's free helper fits in when you're ready.
You're probably overpaying for AI models — here's the sweet spot
Skip 'best model' FOMO. What Trash Panda's AI Model Picker actually does, why good enough beats frontier by default, and how diminishing returns hit once your task only needs about 50 Reasoning.
The desk
Trash Panda
Homelab, AI, gadgets, and the news worth reading — from the same cluttered desk.
Tools
All tools →VRAM calculator
Weights, KV cache, and runtime overhead for the card you actually have.
ChooserPick a model
A few questions, then a practical pick for the job.
DirectoryBrowse models
Cloud and API models with plain-language scores and rough price sense.
LocalRun AI locally
MLX on Mac; GGUF for Ollama, LM Studio, or llama.cpp on PC/Spark.