Writing code models that run on 36 GB

64 models with published weights that fit in 36 GB — a MacBook Pro with 36. Counted at four-bit quantisation, weights only, leaving the machine about a third of its memory and a gigabyte for context: room for roughly 37 billion parameters. A mixture of experts is counted in full, because it is held in full even though only a few experts compute.

An Apple configuration, and a comfortable one: it holds what 32 GB holds without the machine feeling tight, which in practice means a longer context or a browser you do not have to close first.

Models and agents for reading a codebase and changing it, rather than writing a snippet. The boards that matter here are the ones that run against real repositories — SWE-bench, SWE-rebench, Terminal-Bench — because a model can write a plausible function and still fail to make a test pass. Note whether what you are looking at is a model or an agent: an agent brings the harness, the file access and the loop, and is priced for it.

Wider

Writing code models Models that run on 36 GB