0.12.13 — Qwen3.8-27B, text and vision

Qwen’s newest 27B lands day-0 — a hybrid GatedDeltaNet model serving as a strong general-purpose and tool-using text model with full batched throughput, plus a vision-language mode — alongside a batch of desktop app fixes, including chat attachments.

• Qwen3.8-27B is one command away. rapid-mlx chat qwen3.8-27b-4bit serves the hybrid (GatedDeltaNet) checkpoint on the default lane; start with --mllm to answer questions about images through the serialized single-stream vision lane — verified describing a real photo end-to-end. The stale routing notice claiming --mllm “will error” for hybrid backbones was corrected (#1939). Catalog: 171 text aliases, 220 total.
• Model list. An empty cache no longer shows a phantom “No” entry parsed out of the CLI’s “no models cached yet” notice (#1920).
• Onboarding. Completing macOS onboarding now requires explicit confirmation, and model inspection is deferred until consent (#1917, #1926).
• Desktop. Chat accepts PDF, CSV and TXT attachments (#1932); the Launch page’s Codex/Hermes rows actually launch (#1933); resident image downloads show activity instead of a dead button (#1922); audio models are downloaded and verified before serving (#1928, #1923); long answers no longer degrade from O(n²) link cursor rects (#1930); hover no longer masks button labels (#1934); the composer placeholder stays clear of IME text (#1935); zero-token stopped turns are dropped from wire history (#1914).

• @loriz-art — onboarding requires explicit confirmation; model selection kept inside Step 2 (#1917, #1931)
• @osdodo — chat attachments (PDF/CSV/TXT) and audio-model verification before serving (#1932, #1928)
• @xiaoxiunique — Launch rows fixed, hover-label fix, O(n²) cursor-rect fix (#1933, #1934, #1930)
• @Jevin-F — composer placeholder clear of IME text (#1935)