LLM Reference

Needle

Released
2026-05-12
Last refreshed
2026-09-17
Status
Researched 1d ago
Open sourceCommercial use: permittedAgentsJSON / Tool useAgents

Needle is available now for agents and json / tool use with open-source; evaluate it while provider pricing coverage matures.

Use it for

  • Teams evaluating agents and json / tool use

Do not use it for

  • Cost-sensitive launches that need sourced token pricing
  • Vision or document-understanding workloads
  • Teams that need a tracked hosted API route today
Specifications
Family
Needle
Released
2026-05-12
Parameters
26M
Architecture
Encoder-Decoder
Specialization
on-device
Openness
Open source
License
MITOSI-approvedCommercial use: permitted
Weights
Available
Code
Unknown
Training
Pretrained
Created by

Cactus Compute, Inc. builds automation foundation models for tiny devices (mobiles, wearables, smart home, robots, micro

Website
Pricing

No tracked provider token pricing is available yet.

About

Original Needle (catalog slug needle-1) is Cactus Compute's first open ~26M-parameter function-calling model (first-party blog 2026-05-12 + HF Cactus-Compute/needle). Distilled Gemini tool-calling into a Simple Attention Network for consumer devices. License note: May 2026 blog states Apache 2.0; HF cardData/tags currently license:mit and no LICENSE sibling file — EIC should confirm which governs weights; packet leaves licenseSlug empty on this row and documents conflict (do not invent resolution). Context not verified for seed. INSERT sibling under family needle. Compare it for Open Source / Agents / on-device.

Top use-case fit: coding, agents, and build tasks

Agents

Included by capability and metadata signals in the decision map.

JSON / Tool use

Included by capability and metadata signals in the decision map.

Provider price ladder

No tracked provider token pricing is available for this model yet.

Capabilities

JSON / Tool useFine-tuning

Benchmark peer barsfor Agents

No task-mapped benchmark peers are available for this model yet.

Migration checks

No linked migration route is available for this model yet.

API versions

needleneedle-1