Qwen 3.5 identity crisis hits local LLM users

The "Qwen 3.5 thinks it doesn't exist" issue is a classic example of a model outrunning its training data or identity fine-tuning.

• –Identity hallucinations often occur when the training data cutoff precedes the final product branding.
• –Internal "Thinking Mode" outputs sometimes show the correct version, but the final text response defaults to cached identities.
• –For developers, this underscores that model_id in API headers is the only source of truth for version control.
• –Unsloth's high-precision quantization preserves these quirks from the base weights, showing that weight optimization doesn't fix logic gaps.
• –The 9B model remains highly capable despite its self-doubt, maintaining state-of-the-art performance for its size.