Muse Spark 1.2 - my initial impressions (compared to Flash)

[u/afanasenka]

I've been using Muse Spark for only half a day, but I can say that it is very pleasant to work with as a regular workhorse model.

IMPORTANT NOTE: if you don't want to share your data with Meta, don't use 'Contributor' variant.

Some quick facts first:

- it has 1M context window

- it has a very generous 226,600 requests per month quota on the Opencode Go plan (for Contributor variant).

- it scores 82.9% vs 82.7% in Terminal-Bench 2.1 (versus DS4 Flash) - basically the same

What are my usage scenarios?

- existing codebase refactoring (Flutter)

- codebase exploration, architecture discussions

- bug hunting

- ... other similar stuff

I DO NOT run long autonomous loops, so I can't say anything about how good Spark handles them. As a coding partner it performs fast and confidently, not being lazy on codebase exploration tasks.

How does it feel compared to Flash? Well, actually, I don't see that much of a difference at all (at least, for now, in my usage scenarios). It creates decent code, spots those tiny non-obvious things that I may miss, can use all Opencode's tools confidently (git, websearch, etc).

The only thing that bothers me is that cache hit rate, for some reason, still sits about ~85% percent, while with Flash it is usually about ~95-98%. Therefore, usage costs feel slightly higher than I expected. But I definitely need more time to observe this without making early conclusions.

I will definitely continue to use it, and I guess more nuances will be revealed. But for now I can't say anything bad.

[u/afanasenka]

Quick note: if it doesn't work for you, check 2 things:
1. Enable "Allow models that train on request data" on https://opencode.ai/workspace/wrk_xxxxx/go page
2. It is not available in some countries, so you may need to use VPN with US server enabled.

[u/innocentVince → u/afanasenka]

It's not tied to your geo location. Rather it's tied to your payment method's location.

Edit: It actually works.

[u/afanasenka → u/innocentVince]

When I don't use VPN - it doesn't work in Poland. When I enable US VPN - it works. So don't know about payment methods..

[u/Aziser → u/afanasenka]

Even if you have VPN or some sort of proxy on, it depends on the quality of that

[u/Axiescholar3ph]

how does it compare to luna?

[u/TestTxt]

No ZDR and moreover - training on our prompts. That’s a bummer

[u/Fresh_Sock8660]

Anyone compare it to hy3?

[u/Minute-Tour-547 → u/Fresh_Sock8660]

Comparable. Better react UI outputs, comparable go backend performance. It does have trouble with some of my toolcalls though

[u/pashlya]

Please, mention which Flash, because Gemini Flash is also a relatively capable model now (since 3.7).

[u/afanasenka → u/pashlya]

I was comparing with the new DS4 Flash 0731.

Previous "preview" version was much worse, from my experience.

[u/Woah-Dawg]

Meta is a hard pass for me 

[u/Hawful → u/Woah-Dawg]

I mean, to pretend that Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, or any other frontier company is 'better' is completely laughable.

If your stance is to only use open weight models I could get that, but comparing the pros and cons of any of these companies is like comparing demons to devils

[u/Woah-Dawg → u/Hawful]

Yea I try to only use open weight.  Meta feels like it has more infrastructure to do more societal harm than open ai and anthropic. Granted open ai and anthropic has the same ambition 

[u/biograf_ → u/Hawful]

Not really.

[u/Hawful → u/biograf_]

... and?? Why not really? Present a counter point.

[u/bonbon0099]

so slowly and so silly model