The Omni Family¶
The one post that explains what every other post is talking about.
OmniSenter is the project. The Omni Family is the model lineup that the project ships. Once you know the convention, every blog post, every weight name, every checkpoint directory falls into place.
Current state (2026-06-07): the models currently published on HuggingFace under
sovthpaw/are transitional.omnistep-12a3b,Omni-Senter-3B, andOmniSenter-Base-16Bare the v1 lineage — the pieces that proved the Darwin Family + sparse-upcycle approach works. The new architecture described in this post (Senter Ohm 32A8B, OmniSenter 12B, OmniSenterStep) will replace them as it ships. Think of the current HF models asgen-0: foundation, not destination.
The two-letter rule¶
There are three load-bearing words. Each one describes a capability, not a size:
| Word | Means | Adds |
|---|---|---|
| Omni | multimodal native | vision, audio, music, video — all in one model |
| Senter | the agentic core is wired in | tool use, function calling, planning, notebook |
| Ohm | the self-evolution engine is bundled | CMA-ES, genome, validation set, atomic swap |
You can mix them. "Senter Ohm" means agentic + self-evolving. "Omni" alone means multimodal but not agentic and not self-evolving. "Ohm" alone is legal but rare — usually it's bolted onto something.
The taxonomy¶
Cosmos (base, text-only, optionally multimodal)
│
▼
Darwin Family children
(text-only 4B / 8B LoRAs, evolved with CMA-ES)
│
┌─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┐
│ │ │
┌────▼─────┐ ┌──────▼──────┐ ┌──────▼──────┐
│ Omni │ multimodal │ Senter │ Omni + │ Ohm │
│ series │ is assumed │ series │ agentic │ series │
│ │ │ │ core │ (capability)│
└────┬─────┘ └──────┬──────┘ └──────┬──────┘
│ │ │
┌────▼─────────┐ ┌─────────▼─────────┐ │
│ OmniStep │ │ OmniSenter 12B │ Cosmos + │
│ │ │ │ Senter + │
│ Cosmos + │ │ small function │ Hermes-trained │
│ AceStep 4B │ │ calling + │ Qwen VL 8B │
│ Darwin │ │ omnimodal fusion │ Darwin children│
│ children │ │ (~12B active) │ │
└──────────────┘ └─────────┬─────────┘ │
│ │
┌────────────▼────────────┐ │
│ OmniSenterStep / Omni SS│ │
│ │ │
│ OmniSenter + AceStep │ │
│ Darwin fusion │ │
│ (multimodal + music + │ │
│ agentic core) │ │
└────────────┬─────────────┘ │
│ │
└────────────┬───────────────┘
│
┌─────────▼──────────┐
│ Senter Ohm │
│ │
│ OmniSenterStep + │
│ Ohm engine, │
│ ~32A8B MoE, │
│ the flagship │
└────────────────────┘
The models, in plain English¶
Omni¶
The base multimodal family. Anything called "Omni" assumes omnimodality — text, vision, audio, video, music. It does not have the agentic core wired in. It does not self-evolve.
Omni by itself is mostly an architectural target today. The first concrete
shipment in this family is...
OmniStep¶
OmniStep is Cosmos + AceStep 4B Darwin Family children, fused. It's the
multimodal + music model — useful for generative music, audio
understanding, and any task where the model needs to think in sound. No
agentic core. No self-evolution. Just a strong multimodal + music base.
Senter¶
Senter is what happens when you take an Omni and wire the agentic core
into it. Function calling, tool use, planning, and — most importantly —
the notebook. The notebook is what makes Senter useful as a long-running
auxiliary to Hermes Agent: it's the structured state object that flows
back and forth between the two systems.
A "Senter" model is recognisable by the fact that it has a
notebook_manager.py import somewhere.
OmniSenter 12B¶
The small one. Built from Cosmos + Senter + Hermes-trained Qwen VL 8B Darwin children. This is the shipping target for routine function calling + omnimodal fusion on commodity hardware. The "12B" is the aspirational active-parameter count — the actual merge may come out to ~10–14B active depending on how the Darwin children stack. It's a dense-ish model, not a MoE.
This is the model that goes on the home inference box.
OmniSenterStep (Omni SS)¶
OmniSenterStep, or Omni SS for short, is OmniSenter + AceStep Darwin
fusion. So you get the agentic core, the notebook, the multimodal vision,
and the music generation. It's the most capable single model in the
family short of the flagship.
Senter Ohm (~32A8B)¶
The flagship. ~32B total, ~8B active, top-1 routed MoE. Built by sparse upcycling OmniSenterStep with the Ohm self-evolution engine baked in.
The Ohm engine is a 200–400 line runtime that wraps the model with: - a 14-dim genome (the CMA-ES search vector) - a 500-example validation set (held out from training) - a strict-acceptance policy (never serve a worse checkpoint) - an atomic swap mechanism (the model only changes when the new generation wins)
A Senter Ohm model is shipped as a .ohm bundle — weights + genome +
validation set + evolution config. Drop it into a llama-server with the
--ohm flag and it self-evolves in the background, off the request path.
This is the model the blog is actually about.
What "Ohm" means in different places¶
- As a suffix on a model name (
Senter Ohm): the model has the self-evolution engine bundled. - As a file extension (
.ohm): a model bundle with weights + genome + validation set. - As a runtime concept (
ohm_runtime): the Python module that runs the CMA-ES loop. - As a paper (the Ohm paper, TBD): the writeup of the strict-acceptance policy and the atomic swap protocol.
What about the older "OmniSenter" usage?¶
You'll see "OmniSenter" used in two ways going forward:
- The project — OmniSenter is the umbrella project name, the GitHub org scope, the vision. It's the thing being built.
- OmniSenter 12B — a specific model in the family (the small one).
If you see a blog post or README that uses "OmniSenter" as a model name without a number, that's a pre-rename artifact and is in the process of being cleaned up. The flagship is Senter Ohm. The agentic family is Senter. The multimodal family is Omni. The "12B" qualifier matters.
Why this convention?¶
Three reasons:
- You can tell what a model does from its name. "Senter Ohm" tells you it's agentic and self-evolving. "OmniStep" tells you it's multimodal and music-capable. No need to crack open the config.
- Suffix composition is open-ended. When we eventually ship
Senter Ohm Step(or whatever), the convention still works. The words describe capabilities, and capabilities compose. - It maps to the engineering org. The Darwin Family children are shared across all models. The Senter agentic core is a separate component. The Ohm engine is a separate component. The naming tracks the actual code boundaries.
How to use this post¶
If you're new to the project, read this first. Then:
- For the flagship and its 32A8B math → senter-ohm-flagship.md and
senter-ohm-32a8b-math.md.
- For the training pipeline → the-5-stage-pipeline.md.
- For how Senter talks to Hermes → senter-as-hermes-auxiliary.md and
the-notebook-schema.md.
- For the model merging research → generative-darwin-evolution.md and
sparse-upcycling-deep-dive.md.
The catalog lives at CATALOG.md.
TOWARDS SELF-IMPROVEMENT.