The 8B class closing the gap with 32B is the real story of 2026 for anyone running models locally. I've been using smaller models for agent tool-use and the progress this year is real.

The gap that still matters most isn't intelligence — it's consistency on structured output. When you chain 5+ tool calls in sequence, even a small per-call reliability difference compounds fast. Would love to see Granite 4.1 benchmarked specifically on multi-step function calling rather than just general benchmarks.