DeepSeek-V3.2 vs Inkling-Small

DeepSeek-V3.2

DeepSeek-V3.2 is an MIT-licensed reasoning model trained for parallel tool calls, with thinking chosen per request, for long agent work. It needs about 690 GB of FP8 files, eight 80 GB GPUs in vLLM's recipe and prompts built from DeepSeek's Python. The main risk is neglect, with no file changes since December 2025 and no safety evaluation.

Inkling-Small

A mixture-of-experts generalist with images and audio in, several tool calls a turn and per-request thinking effort. It needs about 205 GB for Thinking Machines' NVFP4 build on recent NVIDIA or AMD datacentre GPUs, and Tinker or DeepInfra host it. The main risks are a use policy that binds on download and can change, and no outside safety results.

DeepSeek-V3.2

1. Start it with vLLM's recipe, vllm serve deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.2 --tensor-parallel-size 8 --tokenizer-mode deepseek_v32 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser deepseek_v32 --reasoning-parser deepseek_v3
2. It doesn't fit the 107.4 GB reference machine at any qualifying build, so call DeepInfra (deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.2) or SambaNova (DeepSeek-V3.2) instead
3. Outside vLLM, build prompts with encoding/encoding_dsv32.py and wrap parse_message_from_completion_text in error handling, since DeepSeek says it handles well-formed output only
4. Pick thinking or chat with thinking_mode, and read the reasoning from reasoning_content
5. Send developer messages only for search-agent prompts, the only use DeepSeek gives that role
6. Use temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95 and keep prompts within 128K tokens

Inkling-Small

1. Start the NVFP4 build with SGLang's recipe, sglang serve --trust-remote-code --model-path thinkingmachines/Inkling-Small-NVFP4 --tp 8 --enable-multimodal --reasoning-parser inkling --tool-call-parser inkling, on Blackwell for W4A4
2. Use the inkling tool and reasoning parsers in vLLM or SGLang, or Thinking Machines' tml-renderers package to render prompts and parse calls yourself
3. Pass reasoning_effort as none, minimal, low, medium, high (the default) or max, or a number from 0 to 0.99. The repository's template has no xhigh preset and raises an error for it, though Thinking Machines' docs and SGLang's cookbook list xhigh
4. Effort none conditions the model toward no reasoning but doesn't forbid it, and higher effort needs a larger max_tokens
5. Tool call arguments must reach the template as an object, not a JSON string, or it raises an error
6. Images should be 40 to 4096 px a side and audio 16 kHz WAV under two minutes, per the card
7. Use guided decoding or validate JSON yourself, since structured output isn't documented
8. Read the Model Acceptable Use Policy before deploying, it binds on download and bars some uses that are legal