Carbon-X vs ZAYA1-8B

Carbon-X 35

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 10, only the inherited template shows the format and no parser is named. Trained tool calling 0, nothing says it was trained to call tools. Structured output 0, not documented. Reasoning control 0, thinking can be switched off but was never trained, and the card asks you to keep it off. Context 5, 40,960 tokens from the base, though Hugging Face trained at 8,192 and under 16K. Most of what the card documents for agents is Carbon-X as a tool another model calls, which this checklist doesn't read.

ZAYA1-8B 60

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository (10,700 characters). Tool-calling format 10, only the template and a fork say it. Trained tool calling 10, the template takes tools and renders calls, and the card recommends settings for agent use, but it doesn't say the model was trained for tool calling or for several calls in a turn, so the lower band. Structured output 0, Nothing on the card about JSON or schema-constrained output. Reasoning control 10, the template has an enable_thinking switch, and the card names the qwen3 reasoning parser, which returns the reasoning apart from the answer. Context 10, 131,072 positions in config.json, for an architecture Zyphra trained end to end, so the config is the model's own. 20 + 10 + 10 + 0 + 10 + 10 = 60.

Carbon-X 72

Model card 17, everything but a knowledge cut-off. Training data 15, the mid-training sources and shares are listed, the instruction and fine-tuning data aren't named, and there's no cut-off. Last change 20, 28 October 2026, when config.json, generation_config.json, tokenizer_config.json and tokenizer.py were fixed. Responsiveness 10, organisation members replied to 2 of the 4 questions so far. Version policy 5, a first release whose history was squashed without a note. File health 5, the card now sends llama.cpp users to the publisher's GGUF repository, but the tokenizer config's 131,072 still contradicts the card's 40,960. 17 + 15 + 20 + 10 + 5 + 5 = 72.

ZAYA1-8B 50

Model card 5, Intended use and the parameter counts are on the card. Training data 0, Nothing on the card about the training data. Last change 10, the main repository last changed on 26 June 2026 (the checkpoint reshaped for Transformers), 137 days before this check, and the quantised repositories on 2 July, 131 days. Responsiveness 20, Of the 16 most recent discussions that aren't pull requests (7 May to 14 August 2026), 10 have a reply from a Zyphra member, which is most. Version policy 5, the original checkpoint is kept as ZAYA1-8B-legacy and the card says so at the top, without a date. File health 10, Config, template and card agree on the architecture after the reshape. 5 + 0 + 10 + 20 + 5 + 10 = 50.

Carbon-X 90

Memory 30, the publisher's Q4_K_M GGUF is 9.6 GB, or 11.6 GB with a fifth added. Runtimes 20, released llama.cpp (from b11742, which added the DNA tokenizer), vLLM, SGLang and Transformers all run it, with no Ollama or LM Studio entry. Builds 15, Hugging Face publishes GGUFs at four precisions. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 on the model and on its Qwen3-14B base. Download 10, nothing is gated. Hosted 0, no inference provider or Hugging Face API serves it.

ZAYA1-8B 80

Memory 30, the smallest build from Zyphra is the MXFP4-Experts repository, 5.85 GB, and 5.85 GB × 1.2 = 7.0 GB, within 16 GB. Runtimes 10, Released Transformers 5.22.2 has the zaya model and SGLang 0.5.23 has srt/models/zaya.py. Builds 15, Quantised builds from Zyphra at two precisions, FP8 and MXFP4 for the experts, each in its own repository. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 in the card's metadata, an OSI licence with nothing added. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false for the model and its builds on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account and nothing to accept. Hosted 0, Hugging Face maps no inference provider to it, and the card names no API. Zyphra's site lists a cloud product for its open models, which wasn't checked for this model. 30 + 10 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 80.

Carbon-X 65

File safety 15, safetensors and GGUF only, but the documented loading path runs the repository's tokenizer.py through trust_remote_code. Provenance 15, the files are in HuggingFaceBio, which Hugging Face's GitHub repository links, with a checksum on every file. Safety evaluation 10, Hugging Face reports its own dual-use check on sequence editing in the launch post, without numbers or a harness. Agent guidance 5, general cautions only. Licence risk 15, plain Apache 2.0. Security programme 5, Hugging Face's security.txt is a reporting route, and public advisories couldn't be checked.

ZAYA1-8B 55

File safety 25, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files and no Python in the repository. Provenance 15, the files sit in the Zyphra organisation, which the card ties to zyphra.com's blog post for the model (10). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 0, the card has no limitations or safety section, and nothing on prompt injection, instruction priority or what the model refuses. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 has no use policy, threshold or change clause. Security programme 0, no way to report a flaw on the card, and www.zyphra.com has no security.txt. 25 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 0 = 55.