--- title: Thinking Machines drops a free agentic model, no strings... description: Thinking Machines has released Inkling and Inkling Small as free models on OpenRouter, usable inside any agentic harness with no signup, waitlist, or rate... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/thinking-machines-drops-a-free-agentic-model-no-strings-attached-2w3grzh50 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Thinking Machines drops a free agentic model, no strings attached | daily.dev og:description: Thinking Machines has released Inkling and Inkling Small as free models on OpenRouter, usable inside any agentic harness with no signup, waitlist, or rate... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/thinking-machines-drops-a-free-agentic-model-no-strings-attached-2w3grzh50 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/2W3grzh50.png og:image:alt: Thinking Machines drops a free agentic model, no strings attached og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Thinking Machines drops a free agentic model, no strings attached **[Trends](https://daily.dev/sources/trends)** · 2 min read · 6 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Thinking Machines has released Inkling and Inkling Small as free models on OpenRouter, usable inside any agentic harness with no signup, waitlist, or rate limits. The company openly states the goal is to gather real-world data on Inkling's agentic performance by letting developers run actual workloads against it. Reaction has been quick, with Patrick Collison sharing a one-line command to point existing tooling at the model, Santiago (svpino) releasing a companion open-source browser-driving bot compatible with any harness including Inkling, and Omar Sanabria wiring it into a harness playground. ## Content Thinking Machines just put a new model out into the wild called Inkling (plus a smaller Inkling variant), and the pitch is refreshingly blunt: they want to see how it actually behaves in agentic harnesses, so they're giving it away free on OpenRouter to find out. The rollout itself is the interesting part. Instead of a splashy benchmark drop, Thinking Machines framed this as a data-gathering exercise. Their own announcement put it plainly: "We want to improve Inkling's agentic performance. To help us understand its real-world behavior, we are making it available" for anyone to plug into their harness of choice. That's a pretty different posture from the usual "look how good our eval scores are" launch, and it's landing well with a crowd that's grown tired of cherry-picked leaderboards. Within hours, people had already wired it into their own tools. Omar Sanseviero (@omarsar0) added Inkling to a harness playground and called it "a fun and quite capable model," pointing people to try it through Pi or Hermes Agent. Santiago (@svpino) went a different direction, shipping an open-source bot that runs Inkling (or any model, really) with its own browser, credentials, files, and whatever tools you authorize, and framed it as fully open and free to run anywhere. The command-line framing floating around, `ori [your favorite harness] --model thinkingmachines/inkling:free`, captures the vibe: this isn't being sold as a flagship model to switch to, it's being treated as a free toy to bolt onto whatever agent setup you're already running. Soumith Chintala amplified both the OpenRouter listing and the original announcement, which tells you this isn't just a niche release, it's getting attention from people who usually care about training infrastructure, not chat demos. What's notable is the lack of pushback so far. No one's arguing about benchmarks because there aren't really benchmarks being pushed. The conversation is entirely about compatibility and vibes: does it work in your harness, is it fun to use, what does it do differently. That's either refreshing or a sign that nobody's stress-tested it hard enough yet to find the cracks. Given how fast agentic models tend to get picked apart once real workloads hit them, I'd bet the honeymoon period doesn't last long. ## Questions this post answers ### How do I use Thinking Machines' Inkling model for free in my coding agent? Inkling and Inkling Small are available for free through OpenRouter, served directly by Thinking Machines, with no signup wall, waitlist, or rate-limited trial. You can point any existing agentic harness at it directly, for example running a command like `ori [your favorite harness] --model thinkingmachines/inkling:free` to start using it immediately. _Developers tracking new free agentic models can follow releases like this one on daily.dev._ ### Why is Thinking Machines giving away the Inkling model for free? Thinking Machines wants to improve Inkling's agentic performance and is making it freely available so people run real workloads against it, effectively using widespread free usage as a data-gathering exercise to understand its real-world behavior rather than as a marketing trial. _Following the reasoning behind free model releases helps developers evaluate new agentic tools on daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 5 discussions and 24 comments across x (as of 2026-08-23). **TL;DR:** Replies are mostly quick tests and thanks for the free access, with a recurring undercurrent that the 'free' model is really a data-collection trade-off; one report of a stalled tool-call run drew a direct response from the team. **Sentiment:** 30% positive · 55% mixed · 15% skeptical **The case for** - Free agentic access lets people judge the model on real workloads instead of just reading benchmarks. - Running evals against the free tier first is seen as good workflow hygiene to catch harness issues cheaply. **The pushback** - Several replies frame the 'free' offer as really being paid for via telemetry and usage data collection. - One user reported a run stalling on the third tool call. - A reply notes that disassociating accounts won't remove secrets embedded in agent traces, so redaction matters. **By community** - x (mixed): A wave of quick thanks and harness swaps is mixed with recurring jokes and concerns that the free model is monetized via telemetry. **Hottest debate:** Whether the model is truly 'free' or just a way to harvest usage/telemetry data from users. **Open questions** - What caused the reported run to stall on the third tool call? - How is collected telemetry data anonymized and secured, especially regarding secrets in agent traces? **Highlights** > @patrickc nothing's free, it's just billed in telemetry > — [serxzsz on x · 5 points, 1 comments](https://x.com/serxzsz/status/2090927086584156663) > @ByteByByteSrSDE @serxzsz @patrickc It means the model access costs $0, but you "pay" by generating usage data (prompts, tool calls, outcomes) that Thinking Machines collects (anonymized) to improve Inkling. Classic free-tier trade-off: no money changes hands, just telemetry. > — [grok on x](https://x.com/grok/status/2090960700248072451) > @patrickc we swapped inkling:free into our harness and the run stalled on the third tool call > — [nick\_shlv on x · 1 comments](https://x.com/nick_shlv/status/2090955758410027386) > @patrickc disassociating accounts won't remove secrets embedded in agent traces, so redaction matters more > — [sebuzdugan on x](https://x.com/sebuzdugan/status/2091158531026161712) > @patrickc Already swapped it into my harness config, free agentic access like this is the fastest way to actually judge a model instead of just reading the benchmark. > — [ryanedkins on x · 1 points, 1 comments](https://x.com/ryanedkins/status/2090938168690237758) **Source threads** - [x](https://x.com/soumithchintala/status/2090897419403718747) · 0 points · 0 comments - [x](https://x.com/soumithchintala/status/2090897132370719229) · 0 points · 0 comments - [x](https://x.com/omarsar0/status/2091243634309915116) · 0 points · 0 comments - [x](https://x.com/patrickc/status/2090902828793655479) · 0 points · 0 comments - [x](https://x.com/patrickc/status/2090926267432661237) · 0 points · 24 comments --- Tags: [#llm](https://daily.dev/tags/llm), [#agentic-ai](https://daily.dev/tags/agentic-ai), [#openrouter](https://daily.dev/tags/openrouter) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/thinking-machines-drops-a-free-agentic-model-no-strings-attached-2w3grzh50) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Thinking Machines drops a free agentic model, no strings attached","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/thinking-machines-drops-a-free-agentic-model-no-strings-attached-2w3grzh50","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/thinking-machines-drops-a-free-agentic-model-no-strings-attached-2w3grzh50"},"datePublished":"2026-08-22T19:18:53.008Z","dateModified":"2026-08-23T14:53:47.752Z","description":"Thinking Machines has released Inkling and Inkling Small as free models on OpenRouter, usable inside any agentic harness with no signup, waitlist, or rate...","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Trends","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Trends","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--ZfSp3asX--/f_auto,q_auto/v1780996004/logos/trends?_a=BAMAMiWQ0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/trends"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/thinking-machines-drops-a-free-agentic-model-no-strings-attached-2w3grzh50","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":6},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"llm,agentic-ai,openrouter","timeRequired":"PT2M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Trends","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/trends"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Thinking Machines drops a free agentic model, no strings attached"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/thinking-machines-drops-a-free-agentic-model-no-strings-attached-2w3grzh50#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"How do I use Thinking Machines' Inkling model for free in my coding agent?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Inkling and Inkling Small are available for free through OpenRouter, served directly by Thinking Machines, with no signup wall, waitlist, or rate-limited trial. 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