Kimi K2.5 sparks local-run debate

Kimi K2.5 is not the universal best, but it is the most interesting open model if your workload is visual and agentic. For pure text coding, GLM-5 looks like the more practical challenger.

• –K2.5's moat is multimodality plus orchestration, not just raw size.
• –Local use is the catch: even useful quants want roughly 240GB of combined RAM/VRAM, and the full model sits in datacenter territory.
• –GLM-5 is text-only, and its self-reported tables edge K2.5 on some text-heavy coding and terminal tasks, but K2.5 keeps the multimodal lead.
• –My read is that Qwen3.5 or MiniMax-M2.5 are the lower-footprint compromise picks, but they trade away K2.5's visual and swarm features.
• –Community feedback stays split between K2.5's front-end strength and GLM-5's more practical text-first performance.