Do any of you recommend a local model for Sidekick-like dev? I was unable to get any confirmation from anyone at Shopify about what model is being used and what its environmental implications are, and so I do not feel comfortable using it. However, I would be open to using a local model. Do any of you use a local model to help speed up your Liquid/JS dev?
if you have a powerful enough computer at home - use any model that is good at coding and that is good enough at following instructions. Then feed it with a “tutorial” file on how to write liquid in every of your coding session, so that even if the model does not know liquid out of the box it learns it at prompt time.
As for the environmental, don’t expect them to do something that’s good for environment, they’re here to make money, not to save the planet. Even using Shopify without sidekick, you’re contributing to burning unnecessary electricity 
Have you tried Ai theme Code Editor instead? Better than implementing the local model or setting up CLI.