1) I pay for claude ultra coz the plan rates are significantly better than the api rates, and i feel like i can tokenmax harder than if i am constantly watching my credit balances.
2) yea openrouter free models, usually nemotron coz they have decent availability and I don't get constantly rate limited like with the gemma models on there.
3) honestly still using the default IDE, used to use claude code cli but nowadays i just launch claude remote control and just talk to it through my phone.
4) something custom, i wired it all up in slack so i could easily talk to agents through the same place i do my work
5) Used to use openclaw on a raspberry pi to experiment with like autonomous development but i needed something with a bit more transparency so i moved everything into slack.