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Instructor patches LLM clients to return validated Pydantic models from JSON schemas. Define output as a Python class, get back typed, checked data.
AI | page 19 of 26
Hands-on guides to LLMs, agents, prompt engineering, and the AI tools Botmonster runs every day for real work, not demos.
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: Alibaba's open-weight coding MoE
Alibaba's sparse Mixture-of-Experts: 35B total parameters, 3B active per token. Q4 quantization runs on a MacBook Pro M5 and matches Claude Sonnet.
Gemini CLI: Google's free AI coding agent with 1,000 requests per day
Gemini CLI is Google's free AI coding agent with 1,000 daily requests, 1M token context, and 97K GitHub stars. Extend it with custom MCP servers.
MiniMax M2.7: model that almost matches Claude Opus 4.6
MiniMax M2.7 review: 230B Mixture-of-Experts reasoning model with strong benchmarks, self-hosting options, and a tenth the cost of Claude Opus 4.6.
Prompt caching explained: cut LLM API costs by 90%
Prompt caching stores prefill tokens, skipping reprocessing on repeated requests. Providers like Anthropic and OpenAI offer it to slash API costs.
Aider: the open-source AI pair programmer that works with any LLM
Aider is a terminal AI pair programmer for Claude, GPT, and other LLMs. Uses tree-sitter maps and git integration for coding without lock-in.