needle: Automation foundation model for tiny devices: 2-bit, 8-29 MB, tool calls, ASR, structured extraction

by cactus-compute · LLM Plugin · ★ 14.4k

Last updated: · Indexed by AgentSkillsHub · Auto-synced every 8h

How to install needle

pip install cactus-needle
pip install "cactus-needle[train]"

Taken from the project's README on GitHub. Check the security audit before running it.

Security audit verdict: SAFE · quality 66/100

None of the 42 rules matched — no credential harvesting, no data exfiltration, no curl-pipe-shell installer. Scanned against 42 published rules built on the SlowMist agent-security taxonomy, refreshed every 8 hours. Full audit →

The quality score combines nine heuristic checks of the repo and its README: completeness, clarity, specificity, examples, structure, agent readiness, step-by-step content, instruction quality and security notes. It rates how well the project explains itself to an agent, not the code.

cactusedge-aifoundation-modelfunction-callingllmon-device-aitinymltool-calling

Quick Facts

Stars14,444
Forks1,010
LanguagePython
CategoryLLM Plugin
LicenseApache-2.0
Quality Score66/100
Open Issues5
Last Updated2026-11-02
Created2026-02-24
Platformspython
Est. Tokens~15k

About needle

A foundation model for mobiles, wearables, robots, smart home, automotive and microcontrollers. The whole model is a single 8-29 MB binary built on our Simple Attention Network, and we trade general chat capacity to beat models 10x its size on mobile tool calls and match 2-3x bigger models on extraction.

Compatible Skills

These tools work well together with needle for enhanced workflows:

  • functionary — semantic(0.36)+complementary+same_lang+similar_pop+shared_platform (62%)
  • sgr-agent-core — semantic(0.28)+complementary+same_lang+similar_pop+shared_platform (60%)
  • aci — semantic(0.27)+complementary+same_lang+similar_pop+shared_platform (60%)
  • core — semantic(0.27)+complementary+same_lang+similar_pop+shared_platform (59%)
  • forge — semantic(0.24)+complementary+same_lang+similar_pop+shared_platform (58%)

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How this security grade is produced

Grades come from a rule-based scan built on the SlowMist agent-security taxonomy: 42 published rules, covering credential harvesting, data exfiltration, curl | sh installers and more. It is a first-layer scan, not a manual audit — we say so rather than overstate it.

The scale of the problem is documented independently: Liu et al. (2026), in a study of 31,132 agent skills, report that 26.1% contain security vulnerabilities. Our own full-catalog census is published as a citable open dataset.

Sources & who's responsible:

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