The term 'local LLM' conflates two separate markets

本地 LLM 这个词，把两个市场混装成了一个

Yage breaks down 'local LLM' into two markets: a cost market buying 5–20× price gaps, and a control market buying 25–33-year certainty. Using a four-quadrant framework (open/closed weights × time/token billing), the piece explains why surging open-weight model usage on OpenRouter doesn't mean local deployment is winning. Self-hosting payback depends entirely on which cloud billing mode you replace—decades for subscriptions, months for high-cache-hit agent API calls. In July–August 2026, Anthropic and others made four moves at the inference layer: silently remapping parameters, repeatedly extending usage boosts, adding watermarks, and redefining self-hosting as 'your harness plus my inference.' But simultaneous deep price cuts mean the misalignment is real but direction is unresolved.

Why it matters: Splits 'local LLM' into cost vs control markets with OpenRouter data and hardware payback math — directly useful for infra decision-makers. Not scored higher because it's commentary rather than a product launch or research breakthrough, but hits all three HKR axes and earns a ...