{"slug": "argon", "name": "Argon", "category": "ai", "category_name": "AI models and assistants", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 7, "warners": 2, "score": 1.497, "rising": 3.0, "first": "2026-10-24", "latest": "2026-10-29", "why": "I\u2019ve really appreciated its qualities when supervising my agents\u2019 activities", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 1, "compare": 1, "warn": 2}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I\u2019ve really appreciated its qualities when supervising my agents\u2019 activities", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Argon"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 804634400, "item_id": 50289650, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50289650", "by": "dichiara19", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I\u2019ve really appreciated its qualities when supervising my agents\u2019 activities", "excerpt": "I want to talk about my experience with Argon, noting that I used it via OpenRouter on a Raspberry Pi, spending around $15 in credit. My experience is that Google is aiming to create a generalist model \u2013 but a truly generalist one! In fact, I find it particularly accurate in general terms and even in long conversations, maintaining excellent consistency and a wealth of information in response to complex questions. I\u2019", "context": "", "use_case": "supervising agents, general tasks", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon is the new #1 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5"}, {"id": 804621121, "item_id": 50288820, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50288820", "by": "gnufied", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it has fixed issues which has not been correctly fixed by sol-6.1 (medium)", "excerpt": "hmm, I haven't tried Carbon yet. But I have been using Argon on and off via agent-shell - https://github.com/xenodium/agent-shell and unofficial ACP client. In my limited usage, it has fixed issues which has not been correctly fixed by sol-6.1 (medium) - https://github.com/auto-gnufied/markdown-modern/commit/a189a06f157954e97f45e6b1e9b64a2a68acfdcd I am also using it via Google pro tier and did not immediately run in", "context": "", "use_case": "fixing code issues", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon is the new #1 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5"}, {"id": 804444464, "item_id": 50277779, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50277779", "by": "nater5000", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Argon is a pretty good model", "excerpt": "For what it's worth: Argon is a pretty good model, and this is coming from someone who just sticks with Opus 5.5 mostly across the board. For the current introductory price, it provides an exceptional value. Looks like they're trying to release Carbon (which is apparently a significant improvement) at the same price as Argon, which would be a crazy value. It's worth trying if you have easy access to it (we use Cursor", "context": "", "use_case": "general AI model use", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 804705248, "item_id": 50294078, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50294078", "by": "Revanche1367", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "it hallucinates significantly more even on moderately complex tasks compared to Astra or Opus while being much slower than 3.8 flash", "excerpt": "I had been on the pro plan for a few months and recently upgraded to the $200.00 AI Ultra plan because I've gotten good mileage out of 3.8 flash while keeping in mind that it's far from perfect. Argon is better in my experience in terms of reliability (especially in not claiming to have done things it clearly didn't) but I have to agree with the hallucination part, for a \"SOTA\" model (before Carbon came out at least)", "context": "AI Ultra plan subscriber", "use_case": "coding and general tasks", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon is the new #1 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5"}, {"id": 804676768, "item_id": 50292298, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50292298", "by": "MattRogish", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "it... just made up entire paragraphs that had no basis in reality.", "excerpt": "Yes! I was having Argon summarize some project updates and it... just made up entire paragraphs that had no basis in reality. It felt like I was back in GPT3 days. Will have to give Carbon a try, but if it is anything like what I saw before it was entirely unusable.", "context": "", "use_case": "summarizing project updates", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon is the new #1 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5"}]}], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["coding and general tasks", "summarizing project updates", "supervising agents, general tasks", "fixing code issues", "general ai model use", "coding"], "compared": [{"slug": "claude-opus", "name": "Claude Opus", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "gemini-flash", "name": "Gemini Flash", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "gpt-astra", "name": "GPT Astra", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50288019", "title": "Gemini 4 Carbon is the new #1 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5", "mentions": 5}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50276792", "title": "Gemini 4 Carbon", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50212065", "title": "Kimi K3.1 Pro and K3.1 Pro Highspeed", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"compare": 1, "recommend": 3, "neutral": 1, "warn": 2}}, "quotes": [{"id": 804705248, "item_id": 50294078, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50294078", "by": "Revanche1367", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "it hallucinates significantly more even on moderately complex tasks compared to Astra or Opus while being much slower than 3.8 flash", "excerpt": "I had been on the pro plan for a few months and recently upgraded to the $200.00 AI Ultra plan because I've gotten good mileage out of 3.8 flash while keeping in mind that it's far from perfect. Argon is better in my experience in terms of reliability (especially in not claiming to have done things it clearly didn't) but I have to agree with the hallucination part, for a \"SOTA\" model (before Carbon came out at least)", "context": "AI Ultra plan subscriber", "use_case": "coding and general tasks", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon is the new #1 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5"}, {"id": 804676768, "item_id": 50292298, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50292298", "by": "MattRogish", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "it... just made up entire paragraphs that had no basis in reality.", "excerpt": "Yes! I was having Argon summarize some project updates and it... just made up entire paragraphs that had no basis in reality. It felt like I was back in GPT3 days. Will have to give Carbon a try, but if it is anything like what I saw before it was entirely unusable.", "context": "", "use_case": "summarizing project updates", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon is the new #1 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5"}, {"id": 804634400, "item_id": 50289650, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50289650", "by": "dichiara19", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I\u2019ve really appreciated its qualities when supervising my agents\u2019 activities", "excerpt": "I want to talk about my experience with Argon, noting that I used it via OpenRouter on a Raspberry Pi, spending around $15 in credit. My experience is that Google is aiming to create a generalist model \u2013 but a truly generalist one! In fact, I find it particularly accurate in general terms and even in long conversations, maintaining excellent consistency and a wealth of information in response to complex questions. I\u2019", "context": "", "use_case": "supervising agents, general tasks", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon is the new #1 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5"}, {"id": 804621442, "item_id": 50288840, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50288840", "by": "pcwelder", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Argon is no different, it feels just an iteration better than 3.8 flash.", "excerpt": "Gemini 2.5 flash and 3 flash were highly underrated models that performed way better than the peers and we used the hell out of them. Since then none of the Google models have competed well with the others at their price points. Long context performance drop, instruction following issues, unnecessarily complex and sloppish outputs. Argon is no different, it feels just an iteration better than 3.8 flash. I don't trust", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon is the new #1 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5"}, {"id": 804621121, "item_id": 50288820, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50288820", "by": "gnufied", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it has fixed issues which has not been correctly fixed by sol-6.1 (medium)", "excerpt": "hmm, I haven't tried Carbon yet. But I have been using Argon on and off via agent-shell - https://github.com/xenodium/agent-shell and unofficial ACP client. In my limited usage, it has fixed issues which has not been correctly fixed by sol-6.1 (medium) - https://github.com/auto-gnufied/markdown-modern/commit/a189a06f157954e97f45e6b1e9b64a2a68acfdcd I am also using it via Google pro tier and did not immediately run in", "context": "", "use_case": "fixing code issues", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon is the new #1 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5"}, {"id": 804444464, "item_id": 50277779, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50277779", "by": "nater5000", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Argon is a pretty good model", "excerpt": "For what it's worth: Argon is a pretty good model, and this is coming from someone who just sticks with Opus 5.5 mostly across the board. For the current introductory price, it provides an exceptional value. Looks like they're trying to release Carbon (which is apparently a significant improvement) at the same price as Argon, which would be a crazy value. It's worth trying if you have easy access to it (we use Cursor", "context": "", "use_case": "general AI model use", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gemini 4 Carbon"}, {"id": 803494435, "item_id": 50218402, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50218402", "by": "sail0rm00n", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "compare", "quote": "3. Argon", "excerpt": "As tribute, I bit the bullet on the $40 plan to test out K3.1 Pro. Still burning through the 5-hour rate limit way too quickly, though. Output quality seems solid enough, but the value will probably make a lot more sense via API pricing for smaller projects. My current tier list based on what I\u2019ve been testing: 1. Opus 5.5 2. Astra 3. Argon 4. Kimi K3.1 Pro (For lightweight/daily driver tasks, Gemini Flash 3.8, DeepS", "context": "", "use_case": "coding", "switched_from": "", "story": "Kimi K3.1 Pro and K3.1 Pro Highspeed"}]}