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

Inkling 2 Small vs Muse Glimmer 30B

Muse Glimmer 30B scores 70 (BB) on agent readiness against Inkling 2 Small's 58.8 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Inkling 2 Small leads on agent interface. 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 Muse Glimmer 30BMeta · Open-weight model BB70/100#7 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

  • Agent interface, 85 against 75

Watch for

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

Muse Glimmer 30B BB

Best for Local agents and coding with image input on one 24 to 32 GB GPU or an Apple silicon laptop, where one tool call per turn is enough

Ahead on

  • Reach, 90 against 40
  • Risk, 80 against 65

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better

Watch for

One tool call per turn and no parallel calls

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 Muse Glimmer 30B +50

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.

Muse Glimmer 30B 90

Memory 25, Meta's 16.8 GB Q4_K_M GGUF needs about 20 GB with the runtime's fifth, so it fits a 24 GB card but not 16 GB. Runtimes 25, released model code in vLLM, SGLang, Transformers, llama.cpp and Ollama's library fills the cap. Builds 15, Meta publishes GGUF and ExecuTorch 4-bit builds, read as two kinds as gemma-4-31b-it was, though all are 4-bit k-quants. Terms 10, Apache 2.0 with a usage policy that adds limits beyond the law, so a free commercial licence under a use policy. Download 10, no repository is gated. Hosted 5, Meta's API doesn't serve it but Together, Featherless AI and DeepInfra are live on its Hub page.

Risk Muse Glimmer 30B +15

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.

Muse Glimmer 30B 80

File safety 25, safetensors and GGUF, with the ExecuTorch pos_embed.bin files read as raw embedding tables by their exact size and the Hub's scans, and no repository code runs. Provenance 15, the verified meta-models organisation Meta links, with a checksum on every file. Safety evaluation 10, Meta's own published results with stated set-ups but nothing to rerun and no outside assessor. Agent guidance 15, trained against indirect prompt injection with a principal hierarchy, and results published. Licence risk 10, 5 off for the use policy, and the policy's pointer to a latest copy leads back to the same repository file with no change clause. Security programme 5, a whitehat route in the usage policy, with no security.txt and public advisories unchecked, so scored as absent.

Agent interface Inkling 2 Small +10

Inkling 2 Small 85

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 25, Thinking Machines' tml-renderers guide shows how tools are declared and how calls come back for this model, and its package ships the parser. Trained tool calling 20, several calls in one turn. Structured output 0, not documented. Reasoning control 10, thinking effort is set per request from none to xhigh, and the reasoning comes back in reasoning_content. Context 10, up to 1M tokens. 20 + 25 + 20 + 0 + 10 + 10 = 85.

Muse Glimmer 30B 75

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 25, Meta documents declaring tools, the ATEM block that comes back and the parser for each runtime. Trained tool calling 10, one call per turn and no parallel calls. Structured output 0, nothing documented for JSON or JSON Schema. Reasoning control 10, reasoning can't be turned off but is budgeted per request with four strength levels and returned as reasoning_content. Context 10, 131,072 tokens trained in.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runInkling 2 SmallMuse Glimmer 30BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%254090Muse Glimmer 30B +50
Risk20%206580Muse Glimmer 30B +15
Agent interface10%108575Inkling 2 Small +10
Documentation and upkeep10%106765Inkling 2 Small +2
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 58.8/100BB 70/100

Facts side by side

FactInkling 2 SmallMuse Glimmer 30B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorThinking Machines LabMeta
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-11-122026-10-20
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviewsnone3.8/5 (4)

How the scores have moved

Inkling 2 Small

Muse Glimmer 30B

No score change since it was listed.

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.

Muse Glimmer 30B

A dense 30B multimodal cousin for local agent and coding work with images, documented tool calls and adjustable reasoning. Meta's 17 GB GGUF fits a 24 GB card and runs in llama.cpp, Ollama, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers. The main risks are one tool call per turn, no documented JSON output and a usage policy that adds limits to Apache 2.0.

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

Muse Glimmer 30B

  1. Start it with llama serve -hf meta-models/Muse-Glimmer-30B-GGUF --hf-file Muse-Glimmer-30B-KQuant-17GB-Q4_K_M.gguf -ngl 99 -c 131072 --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8080 --chat-template-kwargs '{"reasoning_strength":"high"}' on llama.cpp b10353 or later, or ollama run muse-glimmer on Ollama 0.32.7 or later
  2. In vLLM pass --tool-call-parser muse_glimmer --reasoning-parser muse_glimmer, in SGLang muse for both, in ExecuTorch --tool-parser atem. Without them tool calls come back as plain text
  3. Set reasoning per request with chat_template_kwargs.reasoning_strength (low, medium, high or xhigh). llama.cpp and ExecuTorch don't read reasoning_effort, and ExecuTorch rejects it with a 400
  4. Expect one tool call per turn and return each result before the next. ExecuTorch's server rejects tool_choice="required"
  5. Keep temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95 and top_k 64, don't run greedy, and never stop on <|eom|>
  6. Leave max_tokens room for reasoning, since in llama.cpp a request cut off mid-thought returns empty content with finish_reason length
  7. For images add Meta's 1.4 GB mmproj GGUF, which takes the build to about 22 GB with the runtime's fifth

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Inkling 2 Small or Muse Glimmer 30B?

Muse Glimmer 30B scores 70 (BB) on agent readiness against Inkling 2 Small's 58.8 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Inkling 2 Small leads on agent interface.

Other comparisons with Inkling 2 Small or Muse Glimmer 30B

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