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LM Studio Bionic: the AI agent for open models
- ShipVoicedev 3mo ago[flagged]
- blitzar 3mo agoI am not sure I get this. It seems on first glance like just another harness ...
- minimaxir 3mo agoIf you want to use local models, it's more ergonomic than fussing with GGUFs or using LM Studio as a server host and setting up the link to an agent yourself. Although, the model selector is the same as with LM Studio itself which can be overwhelming if you don't know what to look for.
- Normal_gaussian 3mo agoBuilt to work with lmstudio, one of the leading easy to use local model servers. LMStudio is the closest to plug-and-play without sacrificing play that I've seen; a harness that works well with it is nothing to sniff at. Its not earth shattering either.
- blitzar 3mo agoI guess it lives or dies by the harness quality then - on open models run locally by plug and players and models that fit onto peoples laptops - that is going to be quite the handicap to overcome. I run lmstudio personally with a range of harnesses (open and closed) and can't say there is that much of a leap to getting everything talking https://lmstudio.ai/docs/integrations https://lmstudio.ai/docs/integrations
- solarkraft 3mo agoMaybe they optimized it really hard for small models. That would be impressive, but hardly a good selling argument. I want a harness that can do both and OpenCode looks just fine for that purpose (and it also has everything else I need). To me this looks like another case of bundling things that shouldn’t be bundled (the harness with the UI) making both worse off because you can’t individually focus on each component. They’ve done this before, bundling a decent UI with decent inference for IMO no good reason, combining the downsides of each instead of letting people mix+match.
- cjonas 3mo agoWouldn't most opensource harnesses work with lmstudio? I assume it has an "openai" style chat API like every other model provider? What's special about it vs langchain deep agents or pi or pydantic-ai?
- solarkraft 3mo agoYes. I don’t see it either. It looks like a competent app (converging on the same principles as others) but what they are advertising as differentiators simply isn’t relevant to its purpose.
- tokai 3mo agoHow does it work with lmstudio? Its a separate standalone application.
- belowavgiq 3mo agobuilt to work with an OpenAI API compatible endpoint, just like any other harness... and if someone can't figure out how to write down an address it's very likely they also can't figure out how to make local models not suck for coding, and would likely switch back to codex/cc after 15 minutes anyways.
- woadwarrior01 3mo agoUltimately, the onus at every VC backed local LLM startup is to launch a cloud based offering, because that's the only potential path in sight for venture scale returns.
- freehorse 3mo agoFor now, it seems that direction that lm studio is taking for enterprise market is "local ai deployment support". They recently launched "lm link" which basically uses tailscale to create e2ee connections between computers running lm studio where you are logged in. Granted one can also setup tailscale or their own vpn themselves and use llama-server, but I guess it is simpler to provide it out of the box. In any case I am not sure pivoting from running local models to "cloud offering" (as in providing llm inference at their severs) is a sensible choice granted there is already competition in that space and they have no leverage there. The highest expected path imo would be to be bought by a company that makes (esp open weights) llms and has a similar business plan around enterprise contracts with local deployments.
- woadwarrior01 3mo ago> In any case I am not sure pivoting from running local models to "cloud offering" (as in providing llm inference at their severs) is a sensible choice granted there is already competition in that space and they have no leverage there. I agree. Incidentally, this is exactly what ollama are doing too.
- christoph 3mo agoI can definitely see a world where you run stuff local first, for all the reasons we know. Sometimes, you are going to want more powerful models, faster, you’re travelling, etc. You might only use these 5 to 10% of the time, but I’m guessing that’s the market they want.
- freehorse 3mo agoBut one can already switch models in a harness between llm providers. I doubt such a pivot can get some much traction.
- solarkraft 3mo agoIt’s a harness + UI with really confusing messaging. Made for open models ... why specifically? Zero data retention ... well duh, it’s a client????
- thehamkercat 3mo agoA friendly reminder that both LM Studio app and now this new LM Studio Bionic app are closed source. Since most people are unaware of this fact.
- minimaxir 3mo agoAnd? Is that a scandal?
- cyanydeez 3mo agosome people want to make money, others want to improve social progress. Happy to clarify which is who and who is which.
- radial_symmetry 3mo agoYou can do both
- folkrav 3mo agoSure. I still don't think it's particularly controversial to acknowledge that the two don't necessarily align either, and that neither really incentivizes the other. Less unanimous and debatable, but many would say they more often do not align than the opposite.
- freehorse 3mo agoYou can do both, until you can't, and then usually making money trumps social progress.
- blitzar 3mo agoSure you can ... simply start by taking donations to benefit all mankind and then once you have done enough of that go private, ipo and join the tres commas club.
- throw1234567891 3mo agoThen go and do
- gehsty 3mo agoThis kind of thing just makes me think Apple will get to a point where they have good enough local models and good enough harnesses for doing things, and most normal people will just use them… Does the LLM become another interface to computing?
- ibero 3mo agoi agree. i believe that for most people on the street, for most tasks, a Chat GPT 3.5 era LLM is sufficient enough. sprinkle in tool calling and other things, and that becomes enough. if you can prioritize that level of a model on-device (baking it in etc), then you can bifurcate AI users between those unwilling to pay and those who are willing to pay A LOT for frontier model performance.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- dominotw 3mo agoor the other way where primary interfaces ppl use computing arent apple devices like laptops and phones.
- ls612 3mo agoI have thought this for a while. Computing 1.0 meant that we needed to learn the computer’s language to interact with the computer fully. Computing 2.0 is that now the computer has learned our language instead.
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- Fr4nZ82 3mo ago[flagged]
- fishfasell 3mo agoIt says no data retention or training on your data, but I assume that doesn't hold true for the frontier cloud models you connect to?
- yags 3mo agoIt does! We negotiated ZDR with our providers. We consider that a condition to make things available to our users: in this case cloud inference and web search/extract. (I’m the founder of LM Studio)
- codazoda 3mo agoI’m worried about the switch in business model here, which is part of the reason I just switched to LM Studio from Ollama. > use the largest frontier open source models through LM Studio Secure Cloud
- satvikpendem 3mo agoUse Unsloth Studio, it's actually open source and I trust Unsloth via their quantized models a lot more than LM Studio.
- docheinestages 3mo agoAny VC-backed company will eventually pivot.
- jckahn 3mo agoAnd also enshittify
- SamInTheShell 3mo agoAt least code isn't a moat anymore. Have a weekend and want your own Discord? Doable.
- Geezus_42 3mo agoProve it.
- SV_BubbleTime 3mo agoWell, it’ll LOOK like discord!
- Geezus_42 3mo agoRight! Lol
- satvikpendem 3mo agoWhy would I use this over any other harness? I suppose they're wrapping it all up in a nice package for enterprise, especially ones that want to control their LLM usage for cost and data security compared to the cloud frontier models.
- slopinthebag 3mo agoThere’s actually not a lot of good harnesses that aren’t slopped together python or JS codebases, which are actually model-agnostic and don’t do some really silly things like bloating the context, too much compaction etc. There is no way I’m running a python or JS agent which is probably vibe coded, it’s just too much risk from a security and supply chain standpoint.
- Geezus_42 3mo agoThe harness is a security threat because it's vibecoded but the code you're having agents write for you isn't? Lol
- slopinthebag 3mo agoI don’t vibe code though, to the extent I actually use agents to generate code it all gets reviewed and it’s essentially exactly what I would have written myself. It’s mostly things like mechanical refactors, boilerplate generation, etc.
- Geezus_42 3mo agoDon't you think that is how the majority of vibecoders see themselves?
- slopinthebag 3mo agoNo? Vibecoders talk about how they don't look at the code, how an IDE is unnecessary, loops, etc. I use ghostty despite knowing mitchellh used AI to build it, because I know he's not vibe coding it. I don't use any Anthropic software for the exact opposite reason.
- nttylock 3mo ago[flagged]
- yags 3mo agoHey everyone! Yagil the founder of LM Studio here. If you want to take Bionic for a spin with GLM 5.2 / Kimi K2.6 / Kimi Coder K2.7, email your lmstudio.ai username to hn-jul16@lmstudio.ai and I'll load your account with some credits! Try it out for coding (in a "Code" project) and document creation / manipulation (in a "Work" project). In Work projects we have automatic checkpointing for every change the agent makes. Would love to hear your feedback.
- Imustaskforhelp 3mo agoThanks! I have sent a mail :-D
- ra 3mo agoCan I use my z.ai coding plan API key?
- Havoc 3mo agoIt’s a standard OAI api so technically should work if the software has byok but would break ZAI ToS. They only allow the tools spelled out on their site They do update that but with lag
- sebmellen 3mo agoYagil, thanks for the credits! Lots of fun to try running this locally. I don't understand the negativity in some of the other comments. This is one of the better agent harnesses I've seen for inspecting reasoning chains, which is super useful for me. Sometimes reading the reasoning is better for my needs than reading the response. I appreciate how transparent that is in contrast with Claude Code/Codex/etc. One question — I saw you mentioned negotiating ZDR with your "providers" — are you hosting the models yourselves, or is another entity hosting them? If another entity, which group?
- opallimetea 3mo ago[flagged]
- 3mo ago
- slopinthebag 3mo agoMaybe I missed it, but can we use this with other cloud api’s? Like using Deepseek directly from their platform via their OpenAI endpoints?
- eliaskg 3mo agoI was searching for that option as well but didn't find it. I guess it's just a new UI + harness for LMStudio in the end.
- Lalabadie 3mo agoI looked for the same, and no, not currently. It's only local models or LM Studio's own API.
- slopinthebag 3mo agoBoo. Ah well.
- inventor7777 3mo agoI have never previously tried a agentic harness for local models yet, but I really love LM Studio so I gave Bionic a shot immediately after reading this! First impression: it works great. I use Codex as my main agent, and the UI looks similar enough that it's familiar and simple to get started. I just pointed it to my existing LM Studio models library, ran Qwen3.6 35B, and the results are exactly what I would hope for. I did notice some rough edges that might be worth improving, however: - Current working directory is not the clearest on the main page of the app. It shows the project name, but is missing the prominent working directory label like Codex has. - The model seems to load when you hit Enter, but it shows "Working" instead of of "Loading model". - There doesn't seem to be a way to pre load the model, it seems like you have to send it something to load the model. - I don't see a way to easily unload the model like the eject button in LM Studio without quitting the app - I pointed it to a directory called "GitHub & Projects" and it somehow ended up making a new folder called "GitHub & Projects". Yes, I know the name is weird but it shouldn't have done that.
- IronWolve 3mo agoIt was fun to try out which local models made better agents. Few thoughts. * locked to a single dir, so no system wide access. * no local web search, can be fixed ddg or local mcp. * no ssh, I want to have it ssh into my server and do the work. * doesnt show the model being loaded, needs a bar/% counter. * Can you drag/drop documents in the work dirs, or only + add them? I love lm-studio, so cant wait to see how this goes. For local I normally use opencode + lmstudio.
- zuzululu 3mo agoanother cool project that i will never use because frontier models are just too far ahead
- jkwang 3mo ago[dead]
- ekianjo 3mo agotrusting them to not retain your data and never train on it is for fools. this is something they say to gain adoption and that they will reverse with an obscure 'privacy policy update' down the road.
- elhart05 3mo ago[flagged]
- przemarzec 3mo ago[dead]
- Capitanai 3mo ago[flagged]
- jkwang 3mo agoGreat to see LM Studio expanding into agent workflows. Local model tooling keeps getting better, and having an open-source option for this is valuable for developers who want to keep their data private.
- jedisct1 3mo agohttps://swival.dev https://swival.dev is an AI agent that was designed for open models since day 1.
- jFriedensreich 3mo agoWhat the hell, as far as i see this is not open source but has the tag line "Meet LM Studio Bionic, the AI agent made for open models" How can someone justify this complete clash of values, who is even an audience for something this. cursed, the agent and harness layer being open is probably more important than your models as you can just switch models every week and they are commodity.
- crowcountry 3mo agoDoes this support ACP?
- HugoDz 3mo agoIs this open source or not ?
- 1g10k 3mo ago[flagged]
- lacoolj 3mo agoIt says this is a separate app than regular LM Studio but I'm not seeing a way to download it. Am I blind?
- sebmellen 3mo agoThey hid it well at the bottom of the page: https://lmstudio.ai/ https://lmstudio.ai/
- lacoolj 3mo agoI still must be blind cuz the main page of lmstudio.ai only says to download LM Studio 0.4.19, which I have already The word "Bionic" is never mentioned on the homepage Any other ideas?
- radicality 3mo agoFor Mac, I see this link on the page: https://lmstudio.ai/download/bionic/latest/darwin/arm64 https://lmstudio.ai/download/bionic/latest/darwin/arm64
- metalliqaz 3mo agoVery exciting, I'll be trying this out soon. I wish LM Studio played better with AMD hardware. It would be really great to have an off-the-shelf solution that "just works" on Radeon.