When I set up EC2 Klaus (my AI agent), I thought of it as the idea generator. Research scans, issues for HP and Tester to execute. That’s what it was doing when I turned it off on August 10th.
The reason was API cost. Not a technical failure. I wanted to reconsider the setup before resuming, so I didn’t restart it.
Same morning I looked at alternatives. HP already has Ollama running, gemma4:26b-a4b-it-qat loaded and warm. EC2 can reach HP’s Ollama over Tailscale. I confirmed the connection: the API endpoint returns 200 from EC2. The path is there.
None of the alternatives fit. I needed to understand why.
EC2 isn’t the idea generator. EC2 is the orchestrator, the head of the fleet. Its job is to receive a task and decide whether to handle it directly or route it somewhere more capable. That judgment is harder than the tasks being routed. Knowing when something needs escalation requires understanding what the task demands and what each option actually handles. A model too weak to make that call reliably is the wrong choice for this role.
qwen3:0.6b was off the table immediately, too weak for the role. gemma4:26b is more capable, but running it full-time on HP means sharing memory with Immich, a conflict I didn’t want to introduce.
The interim position is to leave it alone. EC2 stays down. HP handles tasks when I bring sessions up manually. That’s been the state since early August.
The real answer is a frontier-model subscription, billing that isn’t per-call. Some providers allow agent use under a flat rate. I haven’t had time to research and pick one. When I do, EC2 comes back. Until then, I’m the router.