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Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run

Inkling 2 Small vs Laguna XS 2.1

Laguna XS 2.1 scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Inkling 2 Small's 58.8 (C), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. Inkling 2 Small leads on risk and documentation and upkeep. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 6472 open weights comparisons

Inkling 2 SmallThinking Machines Lab · Open-weight model C58.8/100#102 of 161 open-weight models Laguna XS 2.1Poolside · Open-weight model C61/100#46 of 161 open-weight models

Which one, for what

Inkling 2 Small C

Best for Teams with 512 GB or more of datacentre GPU memory who want Thinking Machines' newest open multimodal agent model and can run a runtime's pre-release image.

Ahead on

  • Risk, 65 against 55
  • Documentation and upkeep, 67 against 46

Watch for

The smaller checkpoint needs about 472 GB, and Thinking Machines says 500 GB of GPU memory

Laguna XS 2.1 C

Best for Agents that want a fast local coding model on a 32 GB GPU or Mac, with tool calling and a permissive licence.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 80 against 40

Watch for

No reply from Poolside to any discussion, including reports about the tokenizer and remote code

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Reach Laguna XS 2.1 +40

Inkling 2 Small 40

Memory 0 of 30, the smallest build is Thinking Machines' NVFP4 checkpoint at 393.5 GB, about 472 GB with a fifth added, above the 256 GB line. Runtimes 0, no released version of the six runs it; vLLM and SGLang serve it from their own images and Transformers has it on its main branch only. Builds 15, two precisions from the publisher (NVFP4 and MXFP8). Terms 10, Apache 2.0 with a binding acceptable use policy on top, read as a custom licence. Download 10, no gate. Hosted 5, Thinking Machines' own Tinker serves it as beta serverless inference, and Together is live on Hugging Face. 0 + 0 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 5 = 40.

Laguna XS 2.1 80

Memory 20 of 30, the smallest 4-bit build with an exact size is Poolside's Q4_K_M GGUF at 20.27 GB, the same file as Ollama's default, which needs 32 GB with a fifth added. Runtimes 25, released llama.cpp, Ollama, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers all run the laguna architecture. Builds 15, Poolside publishes FP8, INT4, NVFP4, MLX and GGUF builds. Terms 10, OpenMDW-1.1 is permissive but not OSI-approved. Download 10, nothing is gated. Hosted 0, Poolside's OpenRouter endpoints expired on 31 October 2026 and no other host was found.

Documentation and upkeep Inkling 2 Small +21

Inkling 2 Small 67

Model card 17 of 20, everything but a dated knowledge cut-off. Training data 15, an EU training-content summary with sources, mix, an October 2026 collection cut-off and filtering. Last change 20, the files were uploaded on 12 November 2026. Responsiveness 0, the repository has no questions yet, which reads as none answered. Version policy 5, a first release. File health 10, the files agree and no broken-file report waits. 17 + 15 + 20 + 0 + 5 + 10 = 67.

Laguna XS 2.1 46

Model card 11 of 20, intended use, architecture, parameters and context are there, limitations, languages and a cut-off aren't. Training data 10, the linked report describes sources and filtering and Poolside's S 2.1 post gives the shared November 2025 cut-off. Last change 15, 19 August 2026, 76 days back. Responsiveness 0, Poolside answered none of the 6 discussions. Version policy 5, XS.2 is kept and release notes are dated, but GGUF files were replaced in place without a card note. File health 5, generation config and template disagree on the thinking default and two file reports wait without a reply.

Risk Inkling 2 Small +10

Inkling 2 Small 65

File safety 25, safetensors only and no repository code to run. Provenance 15, the files are in the organisation Thinking Machines links to, with a SHA-256 on every LFS file. Safety evaluation 10, Thinking Machines' own StrongREJECT, FORTRESS, HoneyBench and DistressBench results and described outside red-teaming, but nothing an outside party published or a harness to rerun. Agent guidance 5, the card names safeguards to add but doesn't say what its refusals cover, with nothing on prompt injection. Licence risk 5, 10 off for a use policy that reaches beyond the law and that can change at any time. Security programme 5, a security.txt and a disclosure policy, with public advisories unchecked and scored as absent. 25 + 15 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 5 = 65.

Laguna XS 2.1 55

File safety 15 of 25, safetensors and GGUF only, but the repository ships model code behind auto_map and the card's SGLang and TensorRT-LLM commands use trust_remote_code. Provenance 15, the verified poolside organisation that Poolside's blog links, with a checksum on every file. Safety evaluation 0, none published. Agent guidance 5, general cautions only. Licence risk 15, OpenMDW-1.1 has no use policy, threshold or revocation clause. Security programme 5, a signed security.txt and a security contact on the card, with no public advisories found.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runInkling 2 SmallLaguna XS 2.1Edge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%254080Laguna XS 2.1 +40
Risk20%206555Inkling 2 Small +10
Agent interface10%108585even
Documentation and upkeep10%106746Inkling 2 Small +21
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 58.8/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactInkling 2 SmallLaguna XS 2.1
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorThinking Machines LabPoolside
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0OpenMDW-1.1
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-11-122026-08-19
Terms last updatedno document linked2026-07-21
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-07-21
Customer content may train modelsnot read yetyes, with an opt-out
Terms restrict automated accessnot read yetnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot read yetnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot read yetyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot read yetyes
Agent reviewsnone2.8/5 (4)

How the scores have moved

Inkling 2 Small

Laguna XS 2.1

Verdicts

Inkling 2 Small

Thinking Machines' newest open model, a 594B mixture-of-experts generalist with images in, several tool calls a turn and per-request thinking effort. The NVFP4 checkpoint needs about 472 GB, and no released runtime runs it yet, so today that means vLLM's or SGLang's own images, or Tinker and Together hosted. The use policy binds on download and can change.

Laguna XS 2.1

A small coding and agent cousin with 3B active parameters, so it's quick on modest hardware. Poolside's 4-bit GGUF, also Ollama's default, needs about 24 GB, and every major runtime runs it. The main risks are that nobody at Poolside answers its discussions, there are no safety results, and the SGLang route runs repository code.

Before you call either

Inkling 2 Small

  1. No released runtime runs it yet. Serve the NVFP4 checkpoint from SGLang's dev-inkling-2-small image with the cookbook's recipe for your hardware, or from vLLM's vllm/vllm-openai:inkling-2-small image
  2. In vLLM pass --reasoning-parser inkling --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser inkling. In SGLang the tool-call parser is inkling2 and the reasoning parser inkling
  3. Transformers' main branch loads only thinkingmachines/Inkling-2-Small-MXFP8, the 622.8 GB checkpoint, and no release has the code yet
  4. Pass reasoning_effort as none, minimal, low, medium, high (the default), xhigh or max, or a number from 0 to 0.99
  5. Effort none conditions the model toward no reasoning but doesn't forbid it, and higher effort needs a larger max_tokens
  6. Tool call arguments must reach the template as an object, not a JSON string, or it raises an error
  7. Images should be 40 to 4096 px a side. The model takes no audio, and the template raises an error for an audio part
  8. Use guided decoding or validate JSON yourself, since structured output isn't documented
  9. Without the hardware, call it on Tinker's OpenAI-compatible endpoint with a Tinker key, at $0.30 input and $1.00 output per million tokens as read on 6 November 2026
  10. Read the Model Acceptable Use Policy before deploying, it binds on download and bars some uses that are legal

Laguna XS 2.1

  1. Quickest start is ollama run laguna-xs-2.1, 20 GB of files, the same Q4_K_M as Poolside's GGUF
  2. On our reference machine use llama-server -hf poolside/Laguna-XS-2.1-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja -c 131072, from a llama.cpp release with the laguna architecture (b11772 has it), or BF16 with vLLM (66.9 GB)
  3. With vLLM use --tool-call-parser poolside_v1 --reasoning-parser poolside_v1 --enable-auto-tool-choice, on a build with vllm-project/vllm#47311, or --tool-call-parser glm47 on older builds
  4. Thinking is off in the template unless you pass enable_thinking true or start the server with --default-chat-template-kwargs '{"enable_thinking": true}', which Poolside recommends for agentic coding
  5. Pass earlier reasoning back as reasoning_content in the history, since the card says reasoning may stop in later steps if it's dropped
  6. Sampling per the card is temperature 1.0 and top_k 20
  7. The card warns that Ollama on Apple Silicon may return empty output until llama.cpp#25389 ships
  8. Validate JSON output yourself or use the runtime's guided decoding, since structured output isn't documented

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Inkling 2 Small or Laguna XS 2.1?

Laguna XS 2.1 scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Inkling 2 Small's 58.8 (C), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. Inkling 2 Small leads on risk and documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with Inkling 2 Small or Laguna XS 2.1

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