Arete-27B vs GLM-4.5-Air

Arete-27B 60

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 10, only the template says it. Trained tool calling 20, several calls a turn and agentic work as an intended use. Structured output 0 and reasoning control 0, neither is documented on the card. Context 10, 262,144 tokens native. 20 + 10 + 20 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 60.

GLM-4.5-Air 85

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 25, Z.ai names the glm45 parser for vLLM and SGLang, says to declare tools in OpenAI style and shows calls coming back. Trained tool calling 20, one or more calls per turn. Structured output 0, documented only for Z.ai's hosted API. Reasoning control 10, enable_thinking false turns thinking off per request and the glm45 reasoning parser returns it separately. Context 10, 128K native.

Arete-27B 63

Model card 8, no limitations, context length, languages or cut-off. Training data 20, the training pairs and the evaluation set are published with their counts. Last change 20, a commit on 6 November 2026. Responsiveness 0, none of 13 discussions has a reply from Nous Research. Version policy 5, a first release. File health 10, the files agree. 8 + 20 + 20 + 0 + 5 + 10 = 63.

GLM-4.5-Air 38

Model card 8 of 20, intended use, parameters and languages only. Training data 5, the technical report describes the sources and filtering with no cut-off. Last change 5, the weights' files date from August 2025 (Hub head a24ceef6, 11 August 2025, re-read on 4 November) and Z.ai's GitHub repository last changed on 1 February 2026, 276 days before this check, so within a year. Responsiveness 10, Z.ai answered 4 of the 14 questions, all in the first three days, recounted by script on 4 November. Version policy 5, a first release. File health 5, the config and tokenizer disagree on the context and a tokenisation report has no reply.

Arete-27B 50

Memory 10, the only build from Nous Research is the 54.7 GB BF16 release, which needs about 66 GB and fits the reference machine. Runtimes 15, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers run the base's architecture from those files, and llama.cpp isn't credited because Nous Research publishes no GGUF. Builds 0, no quantised build of its own. Terms 15, Apache 2.0. Download 10, not gated. Hosted 0, no provider. 10 + 15 + 0 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 50.

GLM-4.5-Air 70

Memory 5 of 30, Z.ai's smallest build is FP8 at 112.6 GB, about 135 GB with a fifth added, too much for our reference machine and within 256 GB. Runtimes 25 (the cap), released llama.cpp, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers run it, and Ollama 0.40.14 (2 November 2026) builds llama.cpp b11963, which has the glm4moe architecture, as kolibri-1 and occamy-1-0 are credited for Ollama's pin. Ollama and LM Studio have no library entry. Builds 10, one quantised build (FP8). Terms 15, MIT with nothing added. Download 10, no gate. Hosted 5, Z.ai and Novita serve it on Hugging Face.

Arete-27B 55

File safety 25, safetensors only and no remote code. Provenance 15, Nous Research's own organisation, linked from its blog, with a hash on every file. Safety evaluation 0 and agent guidance 0, nothing published on either. Licence risk 15, plain Apache 2.0. Security programme 0, no way to report a flaw found. 25 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 0 = 55.

GLM-4.5-Air 65

File safety 25, safetensors only and nothing from the repository runs. Provenance 15, the files are in the organisation Z.ai's GitHub links to, with a SHA-256 on every LFS file. Safety evaluation 10, Z.ai's own SafetyBench results in the technical report. Agent guidance 0, nothing on prompt injection, refusals or safeguards. Licence risk 15, plain MIT. Security programme 0, no security.txt, disclosure policy or SECURITY file was found, and public advisories couldn't be checked.