GoKawiilI’ve been disappointed by local models in the past. But then I checked Qwen 3.6, and I was in awe. For me it’s the first local model that actually makes sense as a general intelligence.
It comes in two variants, a mixture-of-experts model Qwen 3.6 35B A3B, and a dense Qwen 3.6 27B - slower, but more powerful. The one I recommend!
Let me share my impressions, and show that you can run it too.
It’s hot, literally. When my knees started to melt, I grabbed a phone-attached thermal camera and took a photo.
Qwen 3.6, rightfully, got a lot of coverage on Hacker News. The most common statement about Qwen 3.6 27B is that it punches above its weight - see Will it Mythos?. And I think it is a well-deserved sentiment. It will make your computer hot, but it’s worth it!
Testing the waters
Simon Willison uses “penguins on a bicycle” as a smoke test (see for Qwen 3.6 35B A3B and then Qwen 3.6 27B). I usually go with constrained writing.
A year ago these kinds of things were state of the art, needing a unique, and insanely expensive GPT-4.5, see vibe translating Quantum Flytrap.
I also asked it to write an 8 line poem about Zouk dance and quantum physics, see the transcript. The thought process made sense, both in terms of deliberation on quantum terms, and rhymes.
Then I asked in OpenCode to create a hexagonal minesweeper using pnpm . It worked:
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