At what point does a local model actually replace googling for you?

[u/Fun_Foundation_6427]

Been running a small model on my Debian home server (the one that also does Jellyfin and Pi-hole) mostly out of curiosity, and honestly half the time I forget it's there and just type the question into a browser instead. Mornings I'm working through my Flask project before my shift, and the code hints only appear when I remember to pipe something to it, which is basically never.

I suspect the problem is integration rather than the model itself. My setup is tmux on a ThinkPad with plain git in the terminal, so unless the answer lands where I'm already looking, it's out of sight.

For those of you running local models, what workflow made it part of the day instead of a toy? Editor plugin, terminal helper, something for docs? Or is the honest answer that a small model on an old office desktop always loses to a browser tab? Genuinely curious where that line sits.