Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
Inkling 2 Small vs Ornith-1.5-397B
Ornith-1.5-397B and Inkling 2 Small score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 59 (C) and 58.8 (C). 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
Which one, for what
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 50
- Documentation and upkeep, 67 against 36
Watch for
The smaller checkpoint needs about 472 GB, and Thinking Machines says 500 GB of GPU memory
Best for A self-hosted frontier-scale coding agent on an 8-GPU server, where a clear licence file and an answering publisher aren't required
Ahead on
- Reach, 65 against 40
Watch for
Needs about 290 GB of memory at 4 bits and about 970 GB in BF16, so it doesn't fit the reference machine
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.
Documentation and upkeep Inkling 2 Small +31
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.
Ornith-1.5-397B 36
Model card 11, it covers intended use, architecture, parameters and context but not limitations, languages or a knowledge cut-off. Training data 5, a description of the method with no data or cut-off. Last change 20, Ornith uploaded new shards to the NVFP4 build on 20 October 2026. Responsiveness 0, nobody from Ornith answered either of the 2 questions, or any of the six on its GGUF and NVFP4 builds. Version policy 0, every GGUF file and the NVFP4 shards were replaced in place in August with no note. File health 0, the card links a missing LICENSE, the two chat templates differ, and the NVFP4 build carries shards its index doesn't use.
Reach Ornith-1.5-397B +25
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.
Ornith-1.5-397B 65
Memory 0, since the smallest 4-bit build, Ollama's at 242 GB, needs about 290 GB with the fifth added, above the 256 GB band, and Ornith's own Q4_K_M GGUF and NVFP4 builds need about the same. Runtimes 25, the most the line gives, from vLLM 0.19.1, SGLang 0.5.9, Transformers 5.8.1, llama.cpp's qwen35moe architecture and Ollama's library, while LM Studio's entry is the base's. Builds 15, Ornith publishes FP8, NVFP4 and GGUF at several precisions. Terms 15, MIT as named in the card's metadata on 21 October 2026, with nothing added, read by its terms though the repository has no licence file. Download 10, nothing is gated. Hosted 0, Ornith runs no API and no inference provider serves it.
Risk Inkling 2 Small +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.
Ornith-1.5-397B 50
File safety 25, safetensors and GGUF only and no Python in any of Ornith's repositories for this size, so the card's --trust-remote-code flag loads nothing from the repository. Provenance 15, the files come from the ornith-ai organisation Ornith's blog links to, with a SHA-256 for every weight file. Safety evaluation 0 and agent guidance 0, nothing published on either. Licence risk 10, MIT carries no policy, threshold or changeable terms, but the card's licence link is broken. Security programme 0, no security.txt, disclosure policy or security contact.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Inkling 2 Small | Ornith-1.5-397B | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 40 | 65 | Ornith-1.5-397B +25 |
| Risk | 20%20 | 65 | 50 | Inkling 2 Small +15 |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 85 | 85 | even |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 67 | 36 | Inkling 2 Small +31 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | C 58.8/100 | C 59/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Inkling 2 Small | Ornith-1.5-397B |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Open-weight model | Open-weight model |
| Vendor | Thinking Machines Lab | Ornith |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-11-12 | 2026-08-23 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Agent reviews | none | 2/5 (4) |
How the scores have moved
Ornith-1.5-397B
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.
Ornith-1.5-397B
Ornith's largest coding and terminal-agent model, with XML tool calls that vLLM and SGLang parse and 262,144 tokens of context. It needs about 290 GB even at 4 bits, so a multi-GPU server, not the 128 GB reference machine. The main risks are a missing licence file, no safety results, no publisher replies and files replaced without a note.
Before you call either
Inkling 2 Small
- 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
- In vLLM pass
--reasoning-parser inkling --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser inkling. In SGLang the tool-call parser isinkling2and the reasoning parserinkling - Transformers' main branch loads only thinkingmachines/Inkling-2-Small-MXFP8, the 622.8 GB checkpoint, and no release has the code yet
- Pass
reasoning_effortas none, minimal, low, medium, high (the default), xhigh or max, or a number from 0 to 0.99 - Effort none conditions the model toward no reasoning but doesn't forbid it, and higher effort needs a larger max_tokens
- Tool call arguments must reach the template as an object, not a JSON string, or it raises an error
- Images should be 40 to 4096 px a side. The model takes no audio, and the template raises an error for an audio part
- Use guided decoding or validate JSON yourself, since structured output isn't documented
- 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
- Read the Model Acceptable Use Policy before deploying, it binds on download and bars some uses that are legal
Ornith-1.5-397B
- Start it with the card's vLLM command at
--tensor-parallel-size 8, orollama run ornith-1.5:397bon a machine with about 300 GB of memory - In vLLM pass
--enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_xml --reasoning-parser qwen3, and in SGLang--tool-call-parser qwen3_coder --reasoning-parser qwen3, so tool calls and reasoning come back parsed - Thinking is on by default. Send
chat_template_kwargswithenable_thinkingfalse for short tasks, a switch the card doesn't mention - Pin which template your runtime loads, since chat_template.jinja keeps earlier reasoning and the tokenizer_config.json template drops it
- When downloading the NVFP4 build, fetch only the files its model.safetensors.index.json names (the 25-shard set, 241.7 GB), not the eight extra shards
- Pin a revision when you download, since Ornith has replaced files in place
- Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Inkling 2 Small or Ornith-1.5-397B?
Ornith-1.5-397B and Inkling 2 Small score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 59 (C) and 58.8 (C). Inkling 2 Small leads on risk and documentation and upkeep.
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Machine-readable
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anchor compare inkling-2-small ornith-1-5-397b(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "inkling-2-small", "b": "ornith-1-5-397b"}at/mcp, no key