In creating this site, I exclusively used free, open-source tools and technologies (except for my IDE). This experience was incredibly frustrating but, also, rewarding. Coming from using mostly closed-source tools meant that I had certain expectations coming in.

These expectations were set by my previous experiences using Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and Replit. These tools, while extremely useful in their own ways, are still ultimately corporate-focused, so I wanted to find out how I could integrate open-source AI models and tools in certain workflows.

And, as I was also developing my Creatrweb framework, I needed to understand if my framework was at all useful in conjunction with these types of free and paid options. And, although I had my expectations, the results actually surprised me, especially when I decided to use models from Opencode Zen.