id: deepseek-ai__DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B__candidate
status: candidate
name: DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B
org: deepseek-ai
source:
  kind: huggingface
  url: https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B
  revision: main
  model_card_url: https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B
  project_url: https://github.com/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1
license:
  spdx: MIT
  url: https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B
  allows_offline_retention: true
  allows_local_ops: true
  allows_fine_tune: true
  notes: "R1 distill series MIT — confirm card at pin time."
profile:
  summary: "Local reasoning-specialist distill — hard tasks without full R1 MoE."
  original_source: https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B
  use_cases:
    - "Offline multi-step reasoning (math, logic, planning sketches)"
    - "Harder agent tool-selection and self-checks"
    - "Local alternative when DeepSeek API is unavailable"
    - "Eval harness baseline for 'reason' quality on lab tasks"
    - "QLoRA experiments on reason-style behavior"
  sweet_spots:
    - "Reasoning quality above plain 14B chat models at similar size"
    - "Single enthusiast GPU (Q4) without multi-node MoE"
    - "MIT-friendly open reason lineage"
  not_ideal_for:
    - "Cheapest always-on chat (use 3B/8B)"
    - "Full parity with frontier closed reasoners or full R1"
    - "Pure embedding"
  capability_notes: >
    Distilled from DeepSeek-R1 into a Qwen-14B-class dense student. Captures much
    of the reasoner value proposition for homelab VRAM budgets. Primary R-tier
    reason model; full R1 remains strategic S-tier.
swot:
  strengths:
    - "Strong open reasoner at single-GPU scale"
    - "MIT distill story; clear provenance from R1 line"
    - "Complements general 8B chat without replacing it"
  weaknesses:
    - "Heavier and slower than 8B for routine chat"
    - "Distill ≠ full R1; still loses on hardest problems"
    - "May overthink simple tasks if not prompted carefully"
  opportunities:
    - "Route only hard queries here; keep 8B as default"
    - "Domain FT for structured ops decision checklists"
  threats:
    - "Newer distill or mid-size reasoners may obsolete this checkpoint"
    - "VRAM growth of defaults may push lab to 32B distill instead"
size:
  total_bytes: 0
  total_human: "~28 GB fp16 / ~9 GB Q4 (estimate)"
hardware_class:
  min_vram_gb_q4: 10
  min_vram_gb_fp16: 28
  notes: "T2 Q4 preferred; fall back to 8B distill if VRAM tight"
axes: [B, C]
priority: high
collection:
  approved_by: ""
  approved_at: null
  downloaded_at: null
  downloaded_by: ""
  storage_path: ""
  brief_refs:
    - research/2026-07-24-baseline-field-survey.md
reason: "P0/R local reasoning without full R1 MoE — agent/tool loops and harder offline tasks."
tags: [tier-r, reasoning, distill, deepseek]
companions:
  - deepseek-ai__DeepSeek-R1__strategic
notes: "If disk/VRAM constrained, substitute DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-8B as R alternate."
history:
  - at: "2026-07-24"
    event: nominated
    by: baseline-survey
    detail: "P0 recommendation from initial deep research."
  - at: "2026-07-24"
    event: profile_swot_added
    by: grok
    detail: "schema 0.2 profile + SWOT."