LFM3-1.7B vs Ling-3.0-tiny

LFM3-1.7B 100

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository (12,129 characters), with roles, tools, deferred tools, tool results and the thinking switch. Tool-calling format 25, the card and Liquid's tool-use page document tools passed through tools= in apply_chat_template, calls returned as XML and results sent back as tool messages. Trained tool calling 20, the template loops over every entry in an assistant turn's tool_calls, so several calls fit in one turn, and the card says the model was trained on tool calls and agentic traces and with reinforcement learning inside agent harnesses. Structured output 15, Liquid's API guide documents response_format with a JSON Schema, with lfm3-1.7b as the model in its examples, and says the schema is checked before generation starts. Reasoning control 10, the card documents enable_thinking=False in the chat template to turn reasoning off per request, with reasoning on by default inside think tags, and preserve_thinking for earlier turns. Context 10, 256K tokens per the card, which says the mid-training stage extended the context window to 256K, and max_position_embeddings 262144 in config.json. 20 + 25 + 20 + 15 + 10 + 10 = 100.

Ling-3.0-tiny 60

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 10, the format is only in the template and the card names the ling3 parser in commands without describing it, while SGLang uses another parser. Trained tool calling 20, several calls a turn and agentic results on the card. Structured output 0, not documented. Reasoning control 0, thinking turns off per request but the card doesn't say where the reasoning comes back. Context 10, 131,072 tokens native.

LFM3-1.7B 67

Model card 17, Intended use (local agents, tool calling, structured outputs, fine-tuning), a limitation (not recommended for agentic coding or complex multi-step reasoning), architecture (24 layers: 13 gated short convolutions, 5 sliding-window and 6 global attention), parameters (1.73B), context (256K) and 16 languages. Training data 5, A general description: 22T tokens of pre-training in two stages with the kinds of data added since LFM2, 1.75T tokens of supervised fine-tuning, then mixed reinforcement learning, distillation from six specialist teachers and agentic reinforcement learning. Last change 20, the last commit, on 9 November 2026, added the OpenVINO checkpoint to the card's inference table, a day before this check. Responsiveness 10, Of the 22 discussions that aren't pull requests (27 October to 8 November 2026), 7 have a reply from a LiquidAI member, which is some. Version policy 5, LFM3 came out in new repositories and the LFM2.5 models stay in theirs. File health 10, Config, template and card agree on the lfm3 architecture, the 262,144-token context and the thinking switch. 17 + 5 + 20 + 10 + 5 + 10 = 67.

Ling-3.0-tiny 56

Model card 11, intended use, architecture, parameters and context are there, limitations, languages and a cut-off aren't. Training data 15, a data card with sources, size, cut-off and filtering. Last change 15, the newest commit is still the card change of 24 September 2026, 41 days before 4 November. Responsiveness 10, six of 16 discussions answered by an inclusionAI member, some. Version policy 5, a first release at this size. File health 0, the card's MTP recipe contradicts the files and a broken index size waits without a reply.

LFM3-1.7B 85

Memory 30, Liquid's Q4_K_M GGUF is 1.10 GB, and 1.10 GB × 1.2 = 1.3 GB, which fits 8 GB, well inside the 16 GB line. Runtimes 15, Released llama.cpp has the lfm3 architecture (src/models/lfm3.cpp at b12242), Ollama's library has an lfm3 entry, and LM Studio's catalogue runs the architecture (its liquid/lfm3-vl-2b entry; lmstudio-community publishes a GGUF of this model). Builds 15, Liquid's GGUF repository holds Q4_0, Q4_K_M, Q8_0, F16 and BF16 files, and Liquid publishes 4-bit and 8-bit MLX builds and an ONNX repository, all in the LiquidAI organisation. Terms 10, the LFM Open License v1.0, a custom licence that lets anyone use it commercially for free below a threshold of $10M annual revenue. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false for the model and its GGUF, MLX and ONNX repositories on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account and nothing to accept. Hosted 5, Liquid's own API lists lfm3-1.7b among its models, so the publisher hosts it. 30 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 5 = 85.

Ling-3.0-tiny 95

Memory earns the full 30, since inclusionAI's own Q4_K_M GGUF is 4.8 GB, about 6 GB with a fifth added. Runtimes earn the full 25, from released Transformers, vLLM, SGLang and llama.cpp, and Ollama, whose v0.40.14 (2 November 2026) pins llama.cpp b11963 with the bailingmoe3 architecture (Ollama v0.40.7 of 20 October already pinned b11738, which has it). LM Studio has nothing. Builds earn 15 for FP8, INT4 and four GGUF precisions from inclusionAI. MIT with nothing added gives terms the full 15 and the ungated repositories give download the full 10. Hosted too scores 0, because the Hub's model page lists no inference provider and no inclusionAI or Ant Group API serving it was found.

LFM3-1.7B 40

File safety 15, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files (25). Provenance 15, files in the LiquidAI organisation, which Liquid's docs page for the model and its blog post link to (10). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card or in Liquid's blog post for the LFM3 family, neither of which mentions safety testing. Agent guidance 0, Nothing on prompt injection, an instruction hierarchy, what refusals cover or safeguards to add. Licence risk 10, 15 less 5 for the $10M annual revenue threshold on commercial use. Security programme 0, no way to report a flaw found. 15 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 10 + 0 = 40.

Ling-3.0-tiny 50

File safety gets 15, safetensors and GGUF only, but the card's vLLM command runs the repository's config code with --trust-remote-code. Provenance gets 15 for files in inclusionAI's own organisation with a checksum on each. Safety evaluation is 0, since SingProbe's results grade the probe, not the model. Agent guidance gets 5 for the SingProbe guardrail inclusionAI publishes for this model, with no statement of trained refusals. MIT carries no licence deductions (15). No security contact or disclosure policy was found (0).