id: meta-llama__Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct__candidate
status: approved
name: Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct
org: meta-llama
source:
  kind: huggingface
  url: https://huggingface.co/meta-llama/Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct
  revision: main
  model_card_url: https://huggingface.co/meta-llama/Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct
  project_url: https://www.llama.com/
license:
  spdx: custom
  url: https://ai.meta.com/llama/license/
  allows_offline_retention: true
  allows_local_ops: true
  allows_fine_tune: true
  notes: "Llama Community License — not MIT; review terms before commercial redistribution."
profile:
  summary: "Tiny edge instruct for always-on and low-VRAM agent micro-services."
  original_source: https://huggingface.co/meta-llama/Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct
  use_cases:
    - "Always-on local helper with minimal power/VRAM"
    - "Fast classification, routing, and short-form rewrites"
    - "CPU or 4–8 GB GPU edge boxes"
    - "Smoke-test harnesses before promoting to 8B+"
    - "Embedded tooling demos and offline kiosks"
  sweet_spots:
    - "Latency and footprint over peak intelligence"
    - "Huge Llama ecosystem (llama.cpp, Ollama, many templates)"
    - "Cheap parallel micro-agents in a fleet"
  not_ideal_for:
    - "Serious coding or long documents"
    - "Domain FT when quality matters (prefer 8B base)"
    - "Standalone reasoning-heavy ops decisions"
  capability_notes: >
    Compact Meta instruct model. Best as a floor for local intelligence and
    high-volume simple tasks, not as the lab's primary brain.
swot:
  strengths:
    - "Very small; runs almost anywhere in the lab"
    - "Massive tooling and community template coverage"
    - "Good enough for structured short outputs"
  weaknesses:
    - "Shallow capability; fails hard tasks silently if not constrained"
    - "Custom Llama license (not pure OSS-permissive)"
    - "HF gated access friction"
  opportunities:
    - "Fleet of specialized tiny adapters per workflow"
    - "Guardrail / router model in front of larger backends"
  threats:
    - "Qwen/Gemma/Smol peers may outclass at same size"
    - "License or regional policy changes for Llama family"
size:
  total_bytes: 0
  total_human: "~6 GB fp16 / ~2 GB Q4 (estimate)"
hardware_class:
  min_vram_gb_q4: 3
  min_vram_gb_fp16: 8
  notes: "T0–T1 edge / always-on"
axes: [B]
priority: high
collection:
  approved_by: "bernd"
  approved_at: "2026-07-28"
  downloaded_at: null
  downloaded_by: ""
  storage_path: ""
  brief_refs:
    - research/2026-07-24-baseline-field-survey.md
reason: "P0/R edge instruct — tiny, huge ecosystem, good CPU/GPU floor for agents."
tags: [tier-r, instruct, edge, llama]
companions: []
notes: "HF gated model — need accepted license on account before download."
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."
  - at: "2026-07-28"
    event: approved
    by: bernd
    detail: "R edge (HF gated — pull when token available)"