Head to head · Inference decision · October 2026 research run
Laya vs Strands Decider 2B
Laya scores 69.2 (B) on agent readiness against Strands Decider 2B's 61.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do inference decision.
Which one, for what
Laya B
Good for Fast, cheap classification and routing on short text in many languages, as a base to fine-tune on your own labels, and as an MCP or LangGraph routing step.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 65 against 50
- Agent ergonomics, 80 against 69
- Security & auth, 57 against 49
- Transparency & trust, 62 against 54
Also in its favour
- Runs on your own machine
Watch for
Base checkpoints score 0.362 and 0.352 on the maintainers' typed-decisions benchmark against a 0.318 random baseline, so it needs fine-tuning
Good for Cheap, local classification, routing, triage and tool-call checks on short text inside Strands or other Python agents, and for teams who want to retrain a decision model from a published recipe.
No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.
Watch for
Version 0.1.0, described as experimental in its package metadata, with no changelog file
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Laya | Strands Decider 2B | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 65 | 50 | Laya +15 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 80 | 76 | Laya +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 80 | 69 | Laya +11 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 57 | 49 | Laya +8 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 60 | 60 | even |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 83 | 79 | Laya +4 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 62 | 54 | Laya +8 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 69.2 · B | 61.3 · C |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Laya | Strands Decider 2B |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Convai Innovations | Amazon Web Services (Strands Agents) |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 (code, LoRA adapter, readout head, training recipe and data inventory), on the Apache-2.0 Qwen3.5-2B-Base |
| Tools exposed | 8 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-05 |
| Popularity | 29k stars | none |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (2) | 2/5 (1) |
Verdicts
Laya
Apache-2.0 code and weights, installed with pip install laya, with Python 3.10 to 3.13 tested in CI. Base checkpoints score 0.362 and 0.352 on the maintainers' typed-decisions benchmark against a 0.318 random baseline, so it needs fine-tuning.
Strands Decider 2B
A 1.9B-parameter Apache-2.0 decision model that runs on a laptop GPU, an Apple silicon Mac or a CPU, with its training data, recipe and per-version results published. It's an experimental 0.1.0 release with a 4,096-token window that cuts long states by default, and its local server has no authentication.
Before you call either
Laya
- Set
LAYA_API_KEYbefore startinglaya-serve. It listens on every interface by default - Gate on
answer_confidence, notconfidence, which measures entropy and doesn't match Jev's field - Shortlist choice questions with more than about 20 options using
predict_shortlistor thelaya_shortlisttool - Use semantic or opaque labels such as
AandB, notyesandno, in choice questions. The checkpoints can follow the label text - Pass
model="multilingual"andmax_len=8192for long documents. The English checkpoint stops at 512 tokens
Strands Decider 2B
- Pin the checkpoint by its full name, such as
StrandsAgents/strands-decider-2B-hobson-v21, since each version is a separate Hugging Face repository - Start the server with
--strict-windowwhen a cut state would make an answer wrong. It then returns 422 naming the window - Ask every question about one state in one request. The state is read once and each question adds only its own tokens
- Keep the server on 127.0.0.1 or put an authenticating proxy in front. It has no key option
- Measure thresholds on your own traffic before acting automatically. The card says confidence bands hold for short classification only
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Laya or Strands Decider 2B?
Laya scores 69.2 (B) on agent readiness against Strands Decider 2B's 61.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.
Do Laya and Strands Decider 2B need an API key?
Neither needs a key.
Can an agent call Laya and Strands Decider 2B without installing anything?
Laya runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. No hosted endpoint is listed for Strands Decider 2B.
Are Laya and Strands Decider 2B open source?
Yes. Laya is open source (Apache-2.0). Strands Decider 2B is open source (Apache-2.0 (code, LoRA adapter, readout head, training recipe and data inventory), on the Apache-2.0 Qwen3.5-2B-Base).
Other comparisons with Laya or Strands Decider 2B
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/convai-laya-vs-strands-decider.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/convai-laya.json·/api/v1/tools/strands-decider.json - From a terminal
anchor compare convai-laya strands-decider(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "convai-laya", "b": "strands-decider"}at/mcp, no key