needle alternatives
Curated alternatives to needle — and why you'd switch.
kev
Open reproduction of TypeSafe's Jev: a LoRA + readout head on Qwen that answers many typed questions about one document in a single prefill pass, returning calibrated probabilities.
Why switchSame bet from two angles: replace a prompted frontier model with a tiny purpose-built one. needle is 45M params for grammar-constrained tool calls, kev is a LoRA+head on Qwen for typed decisions with probabilities.
Full comparison →BigMoeOnEdge
Run MoE models bigger than your RAM: keep the always-needed weights resident and stream each token's experts from flash — a 284B model on a 12 GB phone, CPU only, byte-identical output.
Why switchOpposite answers to the same on-device memory ceiling. BigMoeOnEdge streams a 284B MoE's experts from flash so a phone can run a frontier model; Needle ships a 45M model purpose-built for tool calling that fits in ~28MB and never touches the network. Capability versus footprint.
Full comparison →