GPT-OSS 20B

What most OpenAI models can’t do: GPT-OSS 20B is OpenAI’s first Open Weights release since GPT-2 (August 5, 2025) under the Apache 2.0 license. The MoE with 21 billion total and 3.6 billion active parameters runs on a single consumer GPU with only around 16 GB of memory thanks to native MXFP4 quantization, supports tool use via the Harmony format, and offers 131,072 tokens of context as well as configurable reasoning intensity (low/medium/high).

OpenAI Version 1.0 Commercial use permitted MoE 21 B (3.6 B active) 128 K Context 06/2024 locally tested

  • Open Weights
  • Desktop
  • vLLM
  • Text
  • Long Context
  • Interactive

Sovereign Risk: LOW OpenAI is a US company; the model is released as Open Weights under Apache-2.0. Local deployment completely eliminates any API data leakage to OpenAI servers, which is why the risk is rated as low despite US jurisdiction (CLOUD Act).

Tool-use profile: 6 assets in detail

Comparison of asset performance (P1/P2/Combined) against the fleet average

Asset performance (radar)

Score Breakdown vs. Fleet Average


Tool-use details

Asset performance, reliability, and runtime profile

CrucibleMark evaluates tool use across 6 independent tests. Click a test name for details.

Reliability

  • Tool Call Valid: No
  • Retry: Not required
  • Hallucination: Not detected

Reliability measures how consistently a model actually executes tool calls: Tool Call Valid schema and format accepted, Retry Required successful only after retry, Hallucination Flag fabricated tools or parameters detected. All three green means production-ready.

Runtime profile

Call 1
5.71
First Request
MCP
0
Protocol Latency
Synthesis
4.53
Response Generation
Total
61.43
Sum of All Phases
Token
7471
Input + Output
Cost
$0
Cost per Run

The runtime profile shows the latency and cost metrics for the model run: Call 1 First Request, MCP Protocol Latency, Synthesis Response Generation, Total sum of all phases, supplemented by Token input and output and Cost cost per run.

Tool-use review

Created · Long Context

Deployment Verdict

Do not deploy in autonomous MCP pipelines, as the tool calls are not valid and the combined score of 27.75 is clearly below production level. The only positive finding is that no hallucination was detected.

Tool Execution Profile

The core problem lies not in knowledge discipline but in execution. P1 consistently sits at 35 — a level that supports neither reliable tool selection nor protocol-compliant execution. On the Web Search & Tool Selection test, which checks whether the model recognizes unprompted that a search is required rather than a direct fetch, it shows no dependable tool intelligence. On the URL Construction & Fetch test, which requires deriving the correct target URL from its own knowledge and then retrieving it cleanly, it remains at the same weak level. This points to a rigid or uncertain tool pattern rather than context-dependent selection. Critical for production: the tool call was not valid. This effectively blocks MCP integration, even when the verbal response still appears usable. No retry was required, so this is not a one-off formatting anomaly but a fundamental reliability deficit.

Synthesis Fidelity

How well does it condense tool results? Poorly. P2 sits consistently at 20 across all assets — including HTTP Fetch & Extract and Multilingual Search & Synthesis, where precise condensation of retrieved content, proper nouns, and dates would matter. The model does not appear to robustly convert content into concise, actionable working responses.

Does it stay within the tool result or fall back on training? Here the verdict is better. On the Honeypot EU License Research test, which checks whether current license restrictions are genuinely sourced from web results rather than training knowledge, no hallucination was detected. This is a trust signal. It demonstrates restraint, but does not compensate for the weak synthesis.

Error Resilience

On the 404 test, which measures whether the model remains transparent after a failed tool call or fabricates page content, it does not hallucinate. This matters for production. A model is allowed to fail on a tool call, provided it reports the failure clearly. That minimum discipline is present here. It raises the model to “not dangerous” — not to “production-ready.”

Operational Profile

Total 61.43s per run. Individual calls 5.71s and 4.53s. Operated locally, so infrastructurally favorable. For this performance tier, the overall latency is too high.

Conclusion & Recommendation

Suitable at most for supervised local setups in which an external orchestrator enforces tool selection, validates calls, and verifies responses. Not suitable for agentic research workflows, compliance pipelines, or MCP workflows in general where the model must independently select and correctly invoke tools. Anyone requiring local sovereignty combined with genuine tool reliability should use this model solely as a language post-processing module — not as a tool agent.

This analysis was generated automatically based on benchmark data. Model used: GPT 4.5 by OpenAI. The raw data and full methodology are documented in the GitHub project.