# Poolside Laguna XS.2

12 Hacker News commenters recommended Poolside Laguna XS.2 and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended for fast local use on CPU and for web research; critics say it trails rivals on benchmarks and is broken in places.

## Why people recommend it

- Fast and good on CPU (2 comments): "really fast on CPU and very good" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48698319)) "it's very good on cpu only" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48495310))
- Agent harness works well (2 comments): "theyre shipping the actual agent harness alongside the weights is the part that matters" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47939078)) "It's fast, and the agent adheres to the ACP spec pretty well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47936648))
- Competitive on coding benchmarks (2 comments): "very nice to see it materialized into something competitive" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47937155)) "reasonably competitive on coding related benchmarks" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48750973))

## What people warn about

- Trails rivals on benchmarks (2 comments): "not looking very good on the slightly-less-benchmaxxed Terminal-Bench 2.0" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47937298)) "Not sure if this is competitive, look at the numbers for Qwen3.6" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47937686))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Qwen 3.8 27B](https://hackerapproved.com/p/qwen-3-8-27b.md): 1173 recommend
- [Z.ai GLM](https://hackerapproved.com/p/glm-5-2.md): 1043 recommend
- [Kimi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kimi-k3.md): 931 recommend
- [Gemma 4](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gemma-4.md): 713 recommend
- [Qwen](https://hackerapproved.com/p/qwen.md): 474 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Poolside Laguna XS.2", https://hackerapproved.com/p/laguna-xs-2/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).