DeepSeek-V3.2, MiniMax M2.7 duel for coding agents

This is less a model-vs-model fight than a workflow split. Based on the release notes and pricing signals, DeepSeek looks like the better cost-efficiency play, while MiniMax looks like the smoother interactive coding engine.

• –DeepSeek-V3.2 is explicitly reasoning-first, with thinking integrated into tool-use and 128K context, so it fits long, multi-step agent runs.
• –MiniMax M2.7 leans into software engineering, bug hunting, code security, and complex environment interaction; it claims 97% skill adherence on 40 complex skills and has an `M2.7-highspeed` variant.
• –Qwen2.5 and Mixtral are still sensible open-source baselines to benchmark against, and newer models like MiMo are worth a quick eval if you want more options.
• –In practice, the winner depends on whether your bottleneck is reasoning depth, tool-following, or tokens-per-second.