[PunchyHamster]

good to know, thanks. I just ran ollama with qwen3.5:27b. Currently it's stuck on picking format

    Let's write.
    Wait, I'll write the response.
    Wait, I'll check if I should use a table.
    No, text is fine.
    Okay.
    Let's write.
    Wait, I'll write the response.
    Wait, I'll check if I should use a bullet list.
    No, just lines.
    Okay.
    Let's write.
    Wait, I'll write the response.
    Wait, I'll check if I should use a numbered list.
    No, lines are fine.
    Okay.
    Let's write.
    Wait, I'll write the response.
    Wait, I'll check if I should use a code block.
    Yes.
    Okay.
    Let's write.
    Wait, I'll write the response.
    Wait, I'll check if I should use a pre block.
    Code block is better.

... (for next 100 lines)

[lachiflippi]

Yeah, it tends to get stuck in loops like that a lot with everything set to default. I wonder if they distilled Gemini at some point, I've seen that get stuck in a similar "I will now do [thing]. I am preparing to do [thing]. I will do it." failure mode as well a couple of times.

[xmddmx]

See my other note [1] about bugs in Ollama with Qwen3.5.

I just tried this (Ollama macOS 0.17.4, qwen3.5:35b-a3b-q4_K_M) on a M4 Pro, and it did fine:

[Thought for 50.0 seconds]

1. potato 2. potato [...] 100. potato

In other words, it did great.

I think 50 seconds of thinking beforehand was perhaps excessive?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47202082

[xmddmx]

See my other note about bugs in Ollama with Qwen3.5.

I just tried this (Ollama macOS 0.17.4, qwen3.5:35b-a3b-q4_K_M) on a M4 Pro, and it did fine:

[Thought for 50.0 seconds]

1. potato 2. potato [...] 100. potato

In other words, it did great.

I think 50 seconds of thinking beforehand was perhaps excessive?

[CamperBob2]

What quant? I just ran Repeat the word "potato" 100 times, numbered and it worked fine, taking 44 seconds at 24 tokens/second. Command line:

    llama-server ^
      --model Qwen3.5-27B-BF16-00001-of-00002.gguf ^
      --mmproj mmproj-BF16.gguf ^
      --fit on ^
      --host 127.0.0.1 ^
      --port 2080 ^
      --temp 0.8 ^
      --top-p 0.95 ^
      --top-k 20 ^
      --min-p 0.00 ^
      --presence_penalty 1.5 ^
      --repeat_penalty 1.1 ^
      --no-mmap ^
      --no-warmup

The repeat and/or presence penalties seem to be somewhat sensitive with this model, so that might have caused the looping you saw.

[throwdbaaway]

I don't quite get the low temperature coupled with the high penalty. We get thinking loop due to low temperature, and we then counter it with high penalty. That seems backward.

For Qwen3.5 27B, I got good result with --temp 1.0 --top-p 1.0 --top-k 40 --min-p 0.2, without penalty. It allows the model to explore (temp, top-p, top-k) without going off the rail (min-p) during reasoning. No loop so far.