Inkling-Small vs Kimi K3.1 Pro

Inkling-Small 87

Model card 17 of 20, everything but a dated knowledge cut-off, counting Thinking Machines' own model card page. Training data 15, an EU training-content summary with sources, mix, a July 2026 collection cut-off and filtering. Last change 20, the files last changed on 31 July 2026, but Thinking Machines' Inkling renderer in tinker-cookbook changed in its 30 October 2026 release. Responsiveness 20, Thinking Machines answered 8 of the 9 questions in its discussions. Version policy 5, a first release. File health 10, the files agree and no broken-file report waits. 17+15+20+20+5+10 = 87.

Kimi K3.1 Pro 51

Model card 11, no limitations, languages or cut-off. Training data 5, one general sentence. Last change 20, a commit on 5 November 2026. Responsiveness 0, none of the 8 newest discussions has a reply from Moonshot. Version policy 5, Kimi K3 keeps its repository and no dated note was found. File health 10, the files agree. 11 + 5 + 20 + 0 + 5 + 10 = 51.

Inkling-Small 70

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 and FORTRESS results and described external red-teaming, but nothing an outside party published or a harness to rerun. Agent guidance 10, the card says what its refusals miss and which safeguards to add, 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.

Kimi K3.1 Pro 50

File safety 15, safetensors only, less 10 for remote code and prompts built by the repository's script. Provenance 15, Moonshot's own organisation with a hash on every file. Safety evaluation 10, Moonshot's own cyber benchmark results and nobody else's yet. Agent guidance 0, none on the card. Licence risk 10, the revenue threshold. Security programme 0, no way to report a flaw found. 15 + 15 + 10 + 0 + 10 + 0 = 50.

Inkling-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, 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 the maximum, and the reasoning comes back in reasoning_content. Context 10, up to 1M tokens.

Kimi K3.1 Pro 65

Chat template 10, the format is only code to run. Tool-calling format 10, the parser is named in the runtimes' recipes and the card doesn't say how tools are declared. Trained tool calling 20, several calls a turn on Kimi K3's tools channel. Structured output 5, named among linked guides without the how. Reasoning control 10, reasoning_effort per request. Context 10, 1M tokens. 10 + 10 + 20 + 5 + 10 + 10 = 65.

Inkling-Small 55

Memory 5 of 30, the smallest 4-bit build is Thinking Machines' NVFP4 at 170.8 GB, about 205 GB with a fifth added, so it needs 256 GB. Runtimes 15, released Transformers, vLLM and SGLang run it, llama.cpp, Ollama and LM Studio don't. Builds 10, one quantised build (NVFP4). 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 DeepInfra is live on Hugging Face.

Kimi K3.1 Pro 40

Memory 0, the only build is Moonshot's 1,561 GB MXFP4 release, far above 256 GB. Runtimes 5, llama.cpp b12242 alone has the model code in a release, since vLLM's recipe needs 0.34.0 and SGLang's cookbook a branch. Builds 10, one precision. Terms 10, free commercial use below a model-as-a-service revenue threshold. Download 10, not gated. Hosted 5, Moonshot's API and Together serve it. 0 + 5 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 5 = 40.