I am in no way trying to sell Jev here as some panacea of the modern world; I'm only responding to your questions:

> But their example is classification but that would also be possible and faster with a classic BERT model.

With BERT, you need a large, labeled dataset, and you have to train/fine-tune the model. Jev is pitched as a zero- or 'few-shot' model. You define the schema in code, give it instructions, and it works without a traditional training pipeline.

> So their pitch is a task specific smaller model or am I completely misunderstanding the whole thing?

Yup; that about sums it up: it is more or less an optimized, task-specific small model with the flexible understanding of a traditional LLM.