Gary Hallmark asks: “What can small local LLMs realistically do today?” He did some experiments with these conclusions: “Small local LLMs are often not great at open-ended expert reasoning. But they are already surprisingly capable at: structured data → natural-language transformation. Link

That is a huge real-world category:
• chart summaries
• handoff notes
• draft letters
• explanations
• workflow narration
• UI assistance.”