Qwen 3.5 Is the Local Model That Holds Up in Claude Code

Melvin Vivas · X post · 2026-03-08 · Open on X

Topics: AI Dev Tools & Productivity, AI Agents, Tool Use & MCP, LLM Fundamentals · Level: intermediate

Summary

After trying several local models with Claude Code, the creator found that only Qwen 3.5 keeps working through agentic tasks. Other local models broke before finishing, while Qwen 3.5 completed the task.

Key points

• You can connect Claude Code to local models instead of hosted ones.
• In the creator's tests, most local models break during agentic loops and don't finish tasks.
• Qwen 3.5 stayed reliable and finished tasks, so it is a good candidate for local agentic coding.

Resources mentioned

• Qwen 3.5 · tool · qwen.ai · free
  Alibaba Qwen open model family with small on-device variants and toggleable reasoning.
  Also in: Workshop AI: Building Apps with Cloud and Local Agents (GLM 5, Qwen 3.5) (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Qwen3.5 0.8B Does Real-Time Local Video Captioning (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Qwen3.5 0.8B Real-Time Video Captioning on Mac Studio (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Free, Unlimited Agentic AI with Local Qwen 3.5 (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) and 7 more
• Claude Code · tool · code.claude.com · paid · recommended by both Bashiri Smith & Melvin Vivas
  Build agents and pipelines from the terminal; the guide's main agentic coding tool.
  Also in: Create Claude Code Plugins with /plugin-authoring (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Claude Code mods: customize behavior and UI with plugins (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), AI Engineer Roadmap Overview: From ML Foundations to RAG, Agents & Ops (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), SkillsBento: Free Plugin Marketplace for Codex and Claude Code (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) and 101 more

Try this

• Test local models in Claude Code and check whether they actually finish agentic tasks