LFM3-1.7B vs ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B)

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.

ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B) 70

Chat template 20, the same Jinja template as Qwen3.8-27B, in the repository. Tool-calling format 10 of 25, the card names the parsers but the format lives only in the template. Trained tool calling 20, several calls a turn, and BottleCap evaluated agent tasks. Structured output 0, not documented. Reasoning control 10, reasoning_effort budgets thinking per request and the card says where the reasoning comes back. Context 10, 262,144 tokens.

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.

ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B) 53

Model card 8 of 20, intended use, limitations and parameters are there, but architecture, context, languages and a cut-off aren't. Training data 0, not described. Last change 20, BottleCap's GGUF build of the model changed its card on 7 October 2026, 27 days ago. Responsiveness 10, BottleCap answered 4 of 8 discussions on the main repository. Version policy 5, the earlier ThinkingCap stays in its own repository with an undated pointer to this one. File health 10, the readable metadata and builds agree and no broken-file report waits.

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.

ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B) 75

Memory 25 of 30, BottleCap's IQ4_XS GGUF is 15.5 GB, 18.6 GB with a fifth added, which fits 24 GB. Runtimes 20, it keeps the base's qwen3_5 architecture, which llama.cpp, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers run in released versions, while Ollama's entry is the base's. Builds 15, FP8, NVFP4, MLX and GGUF from BottleCap. Terms 10, PolyForm Small Business is free commercially only below 100 people and 1,000,000 USD (2019) revenue. Download 5, the main repository is gated behind a click-through with an account and contact details, though the GGUF, NVFP4 and MLX builds aren't. Hosted 0, no API or inference provider serves it.

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.

ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B) 45

File safety 25, safetensors only and no code in the repository. Provenance 10 of 15, the files are in BottleCap's verified organisation, but the Hub hides the gated files' SHA-256 from the public, so checksums couldn't be confirmed. Safety evaluation 0, none published. Agent guidance 0. Licence risk 10, 5 off for the size and revenue threshold. Security programme 0, no security.txt, disclosure policy or security contact.