Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
Ripple-65B Preview vs ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B)
ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B) scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Ripple-65B Preview's 53.3 (D), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Ripple-65B Preview leads on risk and agent interface. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.
Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 3674 open weights comparisons
Which one, for what
Best for Teams with Blackwell GPUs or a DGX Spark who want an Apache 2.0 coding model to try for terminal and agentic coding work, and can run the publisher's code to serve it.
Ahead on
- Risk, 55 against 45
- Agent interface, 75 against 70
Watch for
No released runtime runs the architecture, so running it means Ricursive's Python in SGLang 0.5.19 or Transformers' remote code
Best for Small teams and individuals running Qwen3.8-27B for agent or reasoning work who want shorter thinking traces on one 24 GB GPU or Mac.
Ahead on
- Reach, 75 against 45
Watch for
PolyForm Small Business licence, free commercially only below 100 people and 1,000,000 USD (2019) revenue
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 ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B) +30
Ripple-65B Preview 45
Memory 10 of 30, the smallest 4-bit build is Ricursive's NVFP4 at 57.2 GB, 68.7 GB with a fifth added, which is over 64 GB and fits our reference machine. Runtimes 0, no released runtime runs the ricursive architecture with its own code; Ricursive's SGLang plugin and Transformers' remote code don't count. Builds 10, one quantised precision (NVFP4) from Ricursive. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 with nothing added. Download 10, not gated. Hosted 0, Ricursive serves no API, Hugging Face maps no provider, Together AI's page says coming soon, and GMI Cloud's and OpenRouter's pages weren't read.
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.
Risk Ripple-65B Preview +10
Ripple-65B Preview 55
File safety 15, safetensors only, less 10 because the documented way to run it loads Ricursive's Python. Provenance 15, the files are in the organisation ricursive.com links to, with a checksum on every file. Safety evaluation 10, Ricursive's own FORTRESS and StrongREJECT results. Agent guidance 0, nothing on prompt injection, refusals or safeguards. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0. Security programme 0, no way to report a flaw.
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.
Agent interface Ripple-65B Preview +5
Ripple-65B Preview 75
Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository. Tool-calling format 25, Ricursive's server README says how tools are declared and calls come back, with the ripple parser in SGLang 0.5.19. Trained tool calling 20, one or more calls a turn and agentic-coding RL. Structured output 0, not documented. Reasoning control 0, the template has no thinking switch or effort levels. Context 10, long-context training at 2M-token sequences for a stated 1M.
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.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Ripple-65B Preview | ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B) | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 45 | 75 | ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B) +30 |
| Risk | 20%20 | 55 | 45 | Ripple-65B Preview +10 |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 75 | 70 | Ripple-65B Preview +5 |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 49 | 53 | ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B) +4 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | D 53.3/100 | C 61/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Ripple-65B Preview | ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B) |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Open-weight model | Open-weight model |
| Vendor | Ricursive Intelligence | BottleCap AI |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | PolyForm-Small-Business-1.0.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-06 |
| Terms last updated | not read yet | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2026-01-21 |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (4) |
Verdicts
Ripple-65B Preview
A dense 65B coding model from a new lab, pretrained from scratch and released today under Apache 2.0, that Ricursive says leads U.S. open-weight models on Terminal-Bench 2.1. Nobody has checked that yet, and the custom architecture runs only through Ricursive's own SGLang plugin on Blackwell GPUs, with a 57 GB NVFP4 build as the smallest.
ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B)
A Qwen3.8-27B with shorter reasoning, for agent work where thinking tokens cost time, and BottleCap's 4-bit GGUF runs in about 19 GB. The main limits are the licence, which needs a paid licence above 100 people or 1,000,000 USD revenue, a gated main repository, and no safety results or training-data description.
Before you call either
Ripple-65B Preview
- Run Ricursive's launcher from inference/server with
uv run --script serve.pyon two B200 GPUs; it listens on 127.0.0.1:30000 with a 16K context by default - The launcher turns on
--reasoning-parser rippleand--tool-call-parser ripple; without them tool calls come back as raw text inside tool_call tags - For
tool_choice: "required"setstrict: trueandadditionalProperties: falseon each function, which the README says stopped extra argument fields - Leave room in
max_tokensfor reasoning as well as the answer, since thinking is always on - Use chat_template.jinja, not the template inside tokenizer_config.json, which has no tool support
ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B)
- Check the licence first, an organisation with 100 or more people or 1,000,000 USD (2019) revenue needs a commercial licence from BottleCap
- For files without the gate use
llama-server -hf bottlecapai/ThinkingCap-Qwen3.8-27B-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja, about 17.4 GB - On vLLM use
--reasoning-parser qwen3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_xml, and on SGLang--tool-call-parser qwen3_coder - Set
reasoning_effort(xhigh, medium or low) in chat_template_kwargs, any other value makes the template raise an error - Keep the base's sampling (temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95, top_k 20), the GGUF card says greedy decoding can loop
- The GGUFs carry an MTP head, and llama.cpp builds without MTP support for this architecture may refuse to load them with a missing blk.64 tensor
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Ripple-65B Preview or ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B)?
ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B) scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Ripple-65B Preview's 53.3 (D), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Ripple-65B Preview leads on risk and agent interface.
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Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/ripple-65b-preview-vs-thinkingcap-qwen3-8-27b.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/ripple-65b-preview.json·/api/v1/tools/thinkingcap-qwen3-8-27b.json - From a terminal
anchor compare ripple-65b-preview thinkingcap-qwen3-8-27b(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "ripple-65b-preview", "b": "thinkingcap-qwen3-8-27b"}at/mcp, no key