ModelsMiniMax M3: Multimodal Agent Work From a 428B Open Model
M3 is the smallest of the frontier-class open models and the only one that takes video natively. A look at sparse attention, the licence, and where it fits.
ReadNotes on models, agents, and what inference costs
Practical writing for developers building with large language models — how they work, how to pick one, and how to keep the bill predictable.
Models
FundamentalsMixture of Experts: Why Trillion-Parameter Models Are Fast
MoE models decouple parameter count from compute per token, which is why a trillion-parameter model can be cheap to serve. Here is the mechanism and what it costs you.
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FundamentalsModel Distillation Explained
How a small model inherits the behaviour of a much larger one, what gets lost along the way, and why distillation is the reason cheap models got good so fast.
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ModelsModel Routing: Send Cheap Work to Cheap Models
Most requests do not need your most capable model. Routing by task cuts cost sharply and adds resilience — here is how to build it without a mess.
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AI AgentsMulti-Agent Systems: When They Help and When They Hurt
Two credible teams published opposite advice on multi-agent architectures within a day of each other. Both were right, because the answer depends on the task.
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FundamentalsMultimodal Models Explained: How Images Become Tokens
A multimodal model does not see an image. It sees patch embeddings projected into the same space as text tokens. What that implies for cost and accuracy.
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GuidesOne API Key Across Every Coding Tool You Use
Editor extension, terminal agent, CI job and a script all pointing at the same endpoint. The env var conventions, the per-tool quirks, and key hygiene that scales.
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FundamentalsOpen Weights vs Open Source: The Distinction That Matters
Downloadable weights are not the same thing as open source. Here is what the licences actually permit, and which differences change what you can ship.
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ModelsOpen-Weight Models in 2026: Licences, Sizes and Trade-offs
Kimi K3, GLM-5.2, DeepSeek V4, MiniMax M3 and Qwen compared on the axes that decide deployment: licence terms, active parameters, serving cost and benchmark shape.
ReadGuidesOpenClaw Setup: Custom OpenAI-Compatible Provider
OpenClaw ignores the base URL environment variables you expect. Here is the provider block in openclaw.json that actually works, plus the model policy gotcha.
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Cost & PricingPer-Token vs Flat-Rate AI Pricing: Run the Numbers Yourself
Metered inference makes sense until you start using agents. Here is the arithmetic that decides which billing model is cheaper for how you actually work.
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Cost & PricingPrompt Caching Economics: Break-Even, TTL and Hit Rate
Cache writes cost more than normal input, so caching only pays above a read threshold. Here is the arithmetic for TTL choice, hit rate and breakpoint placement.
ReadShowing 685–696 of 731 articles