Fugu Mini vs Gemma-4 12B Coder

What I tested — same prompt, two models

I run the same fixed prompt set through every new model the day it drops — same string, one shot, single HTML file out — and I score the result 0–10 on whether it ran, how close it hit the brief, and how good it looked. Below is what came out when I gave the exact same prompts to Fugu Mini and Gemma-4 12B Coder, side by side, on 5 shared tasks inside the Agent Operating System.

Both models were given identical prompts inside the Agent Operating System — no help, no iteration, no "best of N" tricks. I run each prompt once, save the HTML file the model produces, and score it 0–10 on whether it ran, how close it hit the brief, and how good it looked. The scoring is mine. The verdicts below are pulled from my source comparison guides at agentos.guide where I publish every score and the reasoning behind it.

Fugu Mini · Dispatched from Agent OS as the fast Sakana lane. Bench scored by Claude judge against the same 42 prompts.

Gemma-4 12B Coder · Wired into the Agent OS local engine (Local chat + Local Hermes Engine + Agent Kanban) as the free, offline coder. Scored by Claude judge against the same one-shot prompts every other model ran.

Where Fugu Mini beat Gemma-4 12B Coder

The tasks where I gave Fugu Mini a higher 0–10 score on the same prompt — with the actual commentary from my source guides.

Strengths & weaknesses I logged

Pricing & context — the spec sheet

The verdict — which should you pick?

Across 1 scored shared tasks, Fugu Mini averaged 8.00/10, beating Gemma-4 12B Coder's 2.50/10 by 5.50 points. Pick Fugu Mini when the build has to ship on the first prompt and you can afford the trade-offs in the comparison below.

If you only run one of these inside your stack, the head-to-head average above is the call. If you can run both, my honest play is to wire Fugu Mini and Gemma-4 12B Coder both into the Agent Operating System and dispatch each from the kanban by task type — agent loops where latency matters more than panel consensus → Fugu Mini, free, private, offline coding where nothing can leave your machine → Gemma-4 12B Coder. That's the same setup I run for the 3,600+ founders inside the AI Profit Boardroom.

FAQ — Fugu Mini vs Gemma-4 12B Coder

Which is better, Fugu Mini or Gemma-4 12B Coder?

On Goldie Bench, Fugu Mini averages 8.00/10 across the shared tasks, with 0 gold, 0 silver, 0 bronze overall. Gemma-4 12B Coder averages 2.50/10, with 0 gold, 0 silver, 0 bronze. Fugu Mini wins the head-to-head 1–0.

How much does Fugu Mini cost vs Gemma-4 12B Coder?

Fugu Mini: The non-Ultra `fugu` model on Sakana's API. Sakana describes it as 'Fast mini model optimized for low latency yet high quality responses.' Crucially: zero orchestration tokens per call (vs Ultra's panel of thousands). Returns in ~3 min instead of 6-15 min and doesn't time out on heavy prompts. Gemma-4 12B Coder: A community fine-tune of Google's Gemma-4 12B (xentriom/gemma-4-12B-coder-fable5-composer2.5-v1), Apache-2.0. Free to download and run 100% offline on your own Mac via Ollama — no API, no per-token bill. The Q4_K_M build is 7.4GB.

What's the context window for Fugu Mini vs Gemma-4 12B Coder?

Fugu Mini has a Single-model variant of Sakana's Fugu — no panel orchestration. Same API endpoint, much faster per call. context window. Gemma-4 12B Coder has a 256,000 tokens context window.

When should I pick Fugu Mini over Gemma-4 12B Coder?

Pick Fugu Mini for: Agent loops where latency matters more than panel consensus; Quick first-drafts you'll refine downstream; Filling out a bench when Ultra is timing out. The trade-off is the weaknesses we logged on the bench: Single model only — no ensemble verdict; Newer than Ultra — less calibration / verification.

When should I pick Gemma-4 12B Coder over Fugu Mini?

Pick Gemma-4 12B Coder for: Free, private, offline coding where nothing can leave your machine; Landing pages, simple canvas builds, and code you'll review before shipping; Anyone who wants a $0 local coder wired into their Agent OS. The trade-off is the weaknesses we logged on the bench: Half its one-shots shipped broken on the bench — a missing canvas append, a missing render loop, and an uncompiled WebGL shader; Far below frontier models on complex 3D / WebGL / games — strongest on pages and simple canvas work, not simulations.

How does Goldie Bench score Fugu Mini vs Gemma-4 12B Coder?

Every demo on this page was built by Julian Goldie inside the Agent Operating System — same fixed prompt for both models, one shot, single HTML file out. Each result gets a 0–10 score on whether it ran, how close it hit the brief, and how good it looked. The highest score on each task gets gold; second gets silver; third gets bronze. See methodology for full provenance.

Related comparisons

Other head-to-heads using the same scoring system:

Full model pages: Fugu Mini · Gemma-4 12B Coder · back to the leaderboard