Dean Ball says Kimi K3 is near the best public models for agentic coding, but token-hungry
FinanceYF5 · x · 2026-07-21
In a follow-up to Dean Ball’s Kimi thread, the author says the model is not just “distilled away” into seeming good: in agentic coding, K3 is close to the best public models available in early 2026.
The main caveat from his own use is that the model appears to be very token-hungry, so he is not convinced it is truly cheap to run in practice.
Because the claim is specifically about performance in coding-agent workflows, the post is more about how the model behaves in use than about the model announcement itself.
Related event: Dean Ball’s Kimi Assessment Fuels Debate on Open-Weight AI(6 posts)→
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