# kettei vs Strands Decider 2B

> Strands Decider 2B scores 61.3 (C) to kettei's 58.3 (C) for decision models. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-17

Strands Decider 2B scores 61.3 (C) on agent readiness against kettei's 58.3 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. kettei leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics and security & auth. Both do decision models.

- kettei: grade C, 58.3/100, rank #640 of 1133. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/sqwish-kettei.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/sqwish-kettei.json
- Strands Decider 2B: grade C, 61.3/100, rank #522 of 1133. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/strands-decider.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/strands-decider.json
- Best decision models for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/decision-models/index.md
- All 190 decisions comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/decision-models/index.md

## Which one, for what

### kettei (C)

Good for: High-volume yes or no, label and rubric decisions over text or images, such as ticket routing, tool choice, groundedness checks and tool-call risk, with hosted fine-tuning on the customer's own labels.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 87 against 76
- Agent ergonomics, 89 against 69
- Security & auth, 68 against 49

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for: Launched on 14 October 2026, with no status page, no changelog and no SLA

### Strands Decider 2B (C)

Good for: Cheap, local classification, routing, triage and tool-call checks on short text inside Strands or other Python agents, and for teams who want to retrain a decision model from a published recipe.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 50 against 30
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 35
- Maintenance & community, 79 against 57

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Open source

Watch for: Version 0.1.0, described as experimental in its package metadata, with no changelog file


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | kettei | Strands Decider 2B | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 30 | 50 | Strands Decider 2B +20 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 87 | 76 | kettei +11 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 89 | 69 | kettei +20 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 68 | 49 | kettei +19 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 35 | 60 | Strands Decider 2B +25 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 57 | 79 | Strands Decider 2B +22 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 51 | 54 | Strands Decider 2B +3 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -2 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **58.3 · C** | **61.3 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | kettei | Strands Decider 2B |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Sqwish Labs | Amazon Web Services (Strands Agents) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.sqwish.ai/v1/decide` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | None |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary hosted models and API. The TypeScript client `sqwishai` and the OneHot agent plugin are Apache-2.0. No weights for kettei core or kettei dot were published on 17 October 2026 | Apache-2.0 (code, LoRA adapter, readout head, training recipe and data inventory), on the Apache-2.0 Qwen3.5-2B-Base |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-15 | 2026-10-05 |
| Terms last updated |  | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated |  | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models |  |  |
| Terms restrict automated access |  |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  |  |
| Popularity | 1.2k npm/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 3.8/5 (4) | 2/5 (1) |

## Verdicts

**kettei.** OneHot returns probabilities for up to 128 typed questions a call at $0.02 to $0.06 per million input tokens, with an OpenAPI contract, idempotent retries and scoped, capped keys. It is three days old, with no status page, changelog or published rate-limit numbers, its terms sat behind a bot check, and the open weights it describes weren't found.

**Strands Decider 2B.** A 1.9B-parameter Apache-2.0 decision model that runs on a laptop GPU, an Apple silicon Mac or a CPU, with its training data, recipe and per-version results published. It's an experimental 0.1.0 release with a 4,096-token window that cuts long states by default, and its local server has no authentication.

## Before you call either

### kettei

1. Send `context` and `decisions` to `POST https://api.sqwish.ai/v1/decide` with a bearer key. Leaving out `model` gets `kettei-core`, which reads text only
2. Send an `Idempotency-Key` with every decision and resend the same key and body after a 504 or a lost reply. Replays aren't charged
3. Branch on `error.code` and `error.retryable`, not the status. Wait for `Retry-After` on 429 and retryable 503s
4. Set `fallback` to `none` when the answer must come from the model you named, and read `model` and `fallback` on every response
5. Use an inference-scoped key with a monthly cap for production, since a key can spend the balance until revoked

### Strands Decider 2B

1. Pin the checkpoint by its full name, such as `StrandsAgents/strands-decider-2B-hobson-v21`, since each version is a separate Hugging Face repository
2. Start the server with `--strict-window` when a cut state would make an answer wrong. It then returns 422 naming the window
3. Ask every question about one state in one request. The state is read once and each question adds only its own tokens
4. Keep the server on 127.0.0.1 or put an authenticating proxy in front. It has no key option
5. Measure thresholds on your own traffic before acting automatically. The card says confidence bands hold for short classification only

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, kettei or Strands Decider 2B?

Strands Decider 2B scores 61.3 (C) on agent readiness against kettei's 58.3 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. kettei leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics and security & auth.

### Do kettei and Strands Decider 2B need an API key?

kettei needs an API key. Strands Decider 2B needs no key.

### Can an agent call kettei and Strands Decider 2B without installing anything?

kettei has a hosted endpoint at https://api.sqwish.ai/v1/decide. No hosted endpoint is listed for Strands Decider 2B.

### Are kettei and Strands Decider 2B open source?

No open-source release is listed for kettei. Strands Decider 2B is open source (Apache-2.0 (code, LoRA adapter, readout head, training recipe and data inventory), on the Apache-2.0 Qwen3.5-2B-Base).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/sqwish-kettei-vs-strands-decider.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/sqwish-kettei-vs-strands-decider.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "sqwish-kettei", "b": "strands-decider"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare sqwish-kettei strands-decider`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/sqwish-kettei.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/strands-decider.json

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