Simon Willison's hands-on test suggests Muse Glimmer could be a practical option for developers with sufficient local hardware. The emphasis on agentic workflows taps into a growing, yet still nascent, demand for models that can reliably execute complex, multi-step plans without constant hand-holding. However, the AI industry is littered with models that perform well on curated benchmarks but falter on the edge cases and ambiguity inherent in actual software projects.
The key question is whether this model's 'reliable tool use' holds up over extended, unpredictable sessions, or if it's another promising step that still falls short of robust autonomy.