Best AI Models for Visual Studio

LM-Kit.NET now empowers your .NET applications to operate the most recent open models directly on your device. This includes advanced models such as Meta Llama 4, DeepSeek V3-0324, Microsoft Phi 4 (along with its mini and multimodal versions), Mistral Mixtral 8x22B, Google Gemma 3, and Alibaba Qwen 2.5 VL. By doing this, you can achieve state-of-the-art capabilities in language processing, vision, and audio without relying on any external services. For easy integration of new models, a regularly updated catalog complete with setup guides and quantized versions is accessible at docs.lm-kit.com/lm-kit-net/guides/getting-started/model-catalog.html. This ensures that you can quickly adopt the latest releases while maintaining low latency and ensuring the complete privacy of your data.

Laguna S 2.1 is an advanced open weight coding model that emphasizes long-term project completion and efficient reasoning capabilities. Featuring a 118-billion-parameter Mixture-of-Experts architecture, it activates 8 billion parameters for each token and accommodates a context window of up to one million tokens in both thinking and non-thinking modes. The model’s streamlined active size allows it to perform intricate tasks on local machines while still competing favorably against significantly larger models across various benchmarks, including terminal usage, software engineering, codebase question answering, and tool utilization. Designed for resilience, Laguna S 2.1 excels in tackling challenging assignments with enhanced persistence, meticulous verification, and a readiness to backtrack rather than prematurely claim success. In practical applications, it has successfully created and validated a browser rendering engine from scratch, optimized an agent harness for improved execution speed and reduced memory usage, and conducted extensive mathematical research using the available tools within its environment, demonstrating its versatility and effectiveness. This combination of features positions Laguna S 2.1 as a powerful tool for developers seeking innovative solutions.

Grok Code Fast 1 introduces a new class of coding-focused AI models that prioritize responsiveness, affordability, and real-world usability. Tailored for agentic coding platforms, it eliminates the lag developers often experience with reasoning loops and tool calls, creating a smoother workflow in IDEs. Its architecture was trained on a carefully curated mix of programming content and fine-tuned on real pull requests to reflect authentic development practices. With proficiency across multiple languages, including Python, Rust, TypeScript, C++, Java, and Go, it adapts to full-stack development scenarios. Grok Code Fast 1 excels in speed, processing nearly 190 tokens per second while maintaining reliable performance across bug fixes, code reviews, and project generation. Pricing makes it widely accessible at $0.20 per million input tokens, $1.50 per million output tokens, and just $0.02 for cached inputs. Early testers, including GitHub Copilot and Cursor users, praise its responsiveness and quality. For developers seeking a reliable coding assistant that’s both fast and cost-effective, Grok Code Fast 1 is a daily driver built for practical software engineering needs.

Laguna XS.2 represents Poolside’s innovative open-weight coding model, distinguished as the lightest and quickest member of the Laguna series. This model features a total of 33 billion parameters in a Mixture of Experts setup, with 3 billion parameters activated, and has been meticulously trained in-house using 30 trillion tokens. As the latest generation model accessible to the public, it embodies a second-generation architecture and marks Poolside’s inaugural open-weight offering, drawing from insights gained during the training of Laguna M.1 with synthetic data and reinforcement learning techniques. Specifically designed to enhance agentic coding workflows, Laguna XS.2 excels in coding, acting, and rapidly iterating, particularly within Poolside’s coding agent environment. This model is particularly advantageous for developers and teams seeking a lightweight, efficient coding solution rather than a more cumbersome frontier system. Released under the permissive Apache 2.0 license, it empowers the community to assess, fine-tune, quantize, and build upon its weights, fostering a collaborative development atmosphere. In essence, Laguna XS.2 not only provides a robust platform for agentic coding but also encourages innovation and experimentation among its users.

Laguna M.1 stands out as Poolside's most proficient model for agentic coding, meticulously developed in-house specifically for enhancing software development workflows. This model features a total of 225 billion parameters, utilizing a Mixture of Experts architecture with 23 billion activated parameters, and has been trained entirely within the organization on a dataset consisting of 30 trillion tokens, leveraging the power of 6,144 interconnected NVIDIA H200 GPUs. Poolside undertook the task of training Laguna M.1 from the ground up, employing its proprietary data, dedicated training codebase, and an asynchronous on-policy reinforcement learning approach within its agent framework, all tailored for agentic coding applications. The design of the model ensures optimal performance within Poolside's coding agent, enabling it to effectively reason through software tasks, interact with various tools, edit code, execute tests, and facilitate extended autonomous development sessions. Specifically crafted for developers and teams tackling intricate coding challenges, Laguna M.1 offers enhanced capabilities in reasoning, architectural comprehension, terminal operations, and multi-step execution, surpassing what lighter models can achieve. Ultimately, its robust feature set positions it as an essential asset for those engaged in demanding software projects.

The Laguna XS 2.1 is an enhanced coding model that operates as an open weight agentic system, ideal for long-duration tasks on local machines. Featuring a 33-billion-parameter Mixture-of-Experts framework with 3 billion parameters activated per token, this model maintains the efficient architecture of Laguna XS.2 while significantly advancing performance in multilingual software engineering and terminal-style tasks. It is specifically engineered to assist coding agents in reviewing repositories, reasoning through intricate changes, utilizing various tools, executing commands, and maintaining continuity throughout extended projects. With a generous 256K context window, the model enables agents to effectively manage extensive codebases, lengthy histories, and complex multi-step workflows. Laguna XS 2.1 benefits from support from platforms like vLLM, SGLang, NVIDIA TensorRT-LLM, Hugging Face Transformers, and Ollama, with plans for native integration with llama.cpp in the future. The model is offered in various checkpoint formats, including BF16, FP8, INT4, and NVFP4, granting developers the flexibility to select between high fidelity and configurations optimized for limited VRAM or computational resources. This adaptability makes it an excellent choice for a wide range of development environments and requirements.