I'm wondering, is there a tool or something out there that helps me pick a model, in the vast sea of models out there these days? Every time I need a model for something I see the list on openrouter and I'm completely overwhelmed.
I'd love to be able to explain my use case, my cost preferences and have a tool select a few good models to try.
E.g. I wrote a tool that cleans out my email spam box. It classifies emails that are already flagged as spam, and if it's very obviously spam it removes it permanently (keeps a copy on disk though). And after x emails, it goes through the list of deleted spam mails and suggests email rules. What model would be best suited? I'd love to be able to explain this use case and get this info served to me. The list of models and the information about what they're good at is just too splintered and spread out. I landed on google/gemma-4-31b for now, because it's cheap and good enough and also supports Dutch and French a bit. But I can't realistically try them all.
My approach to this problem is to just...not try them all.
As long as the model you're using solves the problems you have to your satisfaction, there is no need to try any other models, except for financial reasons maybe.
So I start with a relatively cheap model (GLM 5.3 flash for me) and as long as it accomplishes the task (it did so far) I don't have to change. And even if it can't do something, the first thing I change is see if I can give it more tools or better context (useful even if I switch models later) or trying a different approach to the problem.
If google/gemma-4-31b works, you don't need to overthink it.
Starting with GLM-5.3 Flash was a pretty decent first try! I started with other models, and ended up settling on this exact one because all the others were either too slow or unreliable for my tasks. Qwen 3.8 didn't do it for me, whatever tweaks I added to my harness. Where I'm getting at is you did start with an incredible model in the first place, which greatly helps sticking to it.
GLM-5.3 Flash has been my goto since it came out. Only failed once when it lost context, but I'm assuming that was my fault rather than the model. If models never make it past today's close-to-frontier for the rest of my life, I wouldn't complain.
mavamaarten · · focus · HN ↗
I'd love to be able to explain my use case, my cost preferences and have a tool select a few good models to try.
E.g. I wrote a tool that cleans out my email spam box. It classifies emails that are already flagged as spam, and if it's very obviously spam it removes it permanently (keeps a copy on disk though). And after x emails, it goes through the list of deleted spam mails and suggests email rules. What model would be best suited? I'd love to be able to explain this use case and get this info served to me. The list of models and the information about what they're good at is just too splintered and spread out. I landed on google/gemma-4-31b for now, because it's cheap and good enough and also supports Dutch and French a bit. But I can't realistically try them all.
Systemerror7A69 · · focus · HN ↗
As long as the model you're using solves the problems you have to your satisfaction, there is no need to try any other models, except for financial reasons maybe.
So I start with a relatively cheap model (GLM 5.3 flash for me) and as long as it accomplishes the task (it did so far) I don't have to change. And even if it can't do something, the first thing I change is see if I can give it more tools or better context (useful even if I switch models later) or trying a different approach to the problem.
If google/gemma-4-31b works, you don't need to overthink it.
insightfulornot · · focus · HN ↗
alfiedotwtf · · focus · HN ↗