{"slug": "laya", "name": "Laya", "category": "ai", "category_name": "AI models and assistants", "description": "", "recommenders": 1, "commenters": 3, "warners": 1, "score": 0.197, "rising": 1.0, "first": "2026-09-19", "latest": "2026-09-23", "why": "", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 0, "compare": 1, "warn": 1}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0], "listed": false, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/nandhakishorm/laya", "official_url": "https://github.com/nandhakishorm/laya", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Laya", "laya"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 796906448, "item_id": 49806653, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49806653", "by": "prometheus1992", "date": "2026-09-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Why wouldn't i use something like these?", "excerpt": "Why wouldn't i use something like these? - https://github.com/NandhaKishorM/laya - https://github.com/deepanwadhwa/OpenDecision", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenAI is well positioned to fast-follow Jev"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 796271808, "item_id": 49766988, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49766988", "by": "edot", "date": "2026-09-19", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Answer: 9% chance, with 91% confidence.\n\nHeh???", "excerpt": "I don\u2019t understand Jev or this. I used this since it\u2019s open source (good job btw!) with the following. State: \u201ca 6 sided die rolled a 3\u201d, question (noul): \u201cIs the number odd?\u201d Answer: 9% chance, with 91% confidence. Heh??? Ok, even worse. 75% chance a coin landed heads up? State: I flipped a coin. Question: { \"noul_result\": { \"type\": \"noul\", \"instructions\": \"Did the coin land heads up?\" }, \"choice_result\": { \"type\": ", "context": "", "use_case": "probability estimation", "switched_from": "", "story": "I built non-autoregressive decision models with RL a year ago"}]}], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["intent classification", "probability estimation"], "compared": [{"slug": "jev", "name": "Jev", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 798821248, "item_id": 49926328, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49926328", "by": "boundlesshq", "date": "2026-10-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "We're now serving Laya, the open-source alternative to Jev, for free on Vercel AI Gateway", "excerpt": "Hi HN - I'm Santiago, VP of Marketing at Boundless, an inference platform for open models. We're now serving Laya, the open-source alternative to Jev, for free on Vercel AI Gateway (through Oct 31).", "context": "VP of Marketing at Boundless", "use_case": "decision model inference", "switched_from": "", "story": "Free hosted API for Laya, the open-weight decision model"}, {"id": 796355856, "item_id": 49772241, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49772241", "by": "mattstir", "date": "2026-09-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Laya is only ~400M parameters and runs comfortably in 1-2 GB of RAM.", "excerpt": "Laya is only ~400M parameters and runs comfortably in 1-2 GB of RAM. In my local testing, it's very fast even using CPU. I'd say give it a try!", "context": "", "use_case": "local classification model", "switched_from": "", "story": "I built non-autoregressive decision models with RL a year ago"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49765348", "title": "I built non-autoregressive decision models with RL a year ago", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49926327", "title": "Free hosted API for Laya, the open-weight decision model", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49806080", "title": "Does an open-weight decision model beat a hosted one? Jev vs. Laya", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49802161", "title": "OpenAI is well positioned to fast-follow Jev", "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": {"warn": 1, "recommend": 1, "compare": 1}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 796999617, "item_id": 49812476, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49812476", "by": "bladeaidev", "date": "2026-09-23", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Zero-shot Laya tracks Jev on 2-4 labels and falls off a cliff on 77", "excerpt": "Same finding from a different angle. Zero-shot Laya tracks Jev on 2-4 labels and falls off a cliff on 77 (38% vs 76% on banking77 in jevbench). What closed the gap for me was not a bigger model but a small head trained on the task's own rows on top of the frozen encoder: a 12-label intent site went 89.5% -> 100% agreement with its teacher on 3000 rows, support triage 69/34/66% -> 99/86/98%, with the head answering 90", "context": "", "use_case": "intent classification", "switched_from": "", "story": "Does an open-weight decision model beat a hosted one? Jev vs. Laya"}, {"id": 796906448, "item_id": 49806653, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49806653", "by": "prometheus1992", "date": "2026-09-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Why wouldn't i use something like these?", "excerpt": "Why wouldn't i use something like these? - https://github.com/NandhaKishorM/laya - https://github.com/deepanwadhwa/OpenDecision", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenAI is well positioned to fast-follow Jev"}, {"id": 796271808, "item_id": 49766988, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49766988", "by": "edot", "date": "2026-09-19", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Answer: 9% chance, with 91% confidence.\n\nHeh???", "excerpt": "I don\u2019t understand Jev or this. I used this since it\u2019s open source (good job btw!) with the following. State: \u201ca 6 sided die rolled a 3\u201d, question (noul): \u201cIs the number odd?\u201d Answer: 9% chance, with 91% confidence. Heh??? Ok, even worse. 75% chance a coin landed heads up? State: I flipped a coin. Question: { \"noul_result\": { \"type\": \"noul\", \"instructions\": \"Did the coin land heads up?\" }, \"choice_result\": { \"type\": ", "context": "", "use_case": "probability estimation", "switched_from": "", "story": "I built non-autoregressive decision models with RL a year ago"}]}