The real story here isn't Gemma 4 specifically, it's that the harness and the model are now fully decoupled. Claude Code, OpenCode, Pi, Codex all work with any backend. The coding agent is becoming a commodity layer and the competition is moving to model quality and cost. Good for users, bad for anyone whose moat was the harness
Sounds like the exact opposite, models are being commoditized while the harness and tooling around a model is what actually gets significant gains, especially with RL around specific models.
For example, this article was posted recently, Improving 15 LLMs at Coding in One Afternoon. Only the Harness Changed [0].
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46988596
I think it’s ALL getting commoditized. The winners here are engineers (who are onboard with the agentic surge) and, hopefully, users who get more and better software.
> hopefully, users who get more and better software.
Users are definitely going to get more software and more features and redesigns in the software they use, but I have strong doubts that it's going to get better.
If pre-LLM developer productivity was used to build all sorts of deranged anti-user promo-padding bullshit, imagine how much more of it we can do with a 2x more productive employee base.
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You could always point Claude Code and open code at a local http endpoint
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