# Show HN: Ototo: A tool to offload code exploration to a smaller model

> Source: <https://ototo.dev/>
> Published: 2026-10-05 21:25:51+00:00

Hey all - I made a thing with my clanker Kevin: Ototo ([https://ototo.dev/](https://ototo.dev/)) - *yes this is clanker driven dev*. The idea is to offload code exploration and other token'y heavy tasks to a smaller model to do the work and chuck the result back. This helps in a couple of ways (1) it saves tokens if you can offload to a cheaper or free local model (2) it can keep the main context clearer as it removes all the sherlocking thinking/exploration. It also saves more tokens than using anthropics own exploration agent.

I had originally played around with a graph based approach but found this to work better. Currently, I have this running with Qwen 3.8 27B on my framework (I had Kevin build me a custom inference engine to squeeze all the juice I could out of the AMD - [https://gitlab.com/handmadedigital/projects/shocho](https://gitlab.com/handmadedigital/projects/shocho)).

It's been through a bunch of tests (results are available if people want) against a load of different repos, including comparing subsequent commits of large repos with claude, claude + exploration agent and claude + ototo and so far ototo seems to really help.

The site is very 'LLM'y at the moment - I haven't had time to edit it to make the text more readable for us humans. Sorry.

Hope it helps folks in their day-to-day.

--EOL

Comments URL: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49971028](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49971028)

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