What 1.2 fixes vs 1.1: anti-loop behavior (no repeated cd/bash), tool-call JSON format, fewer absolute-path writes.
Functional tests (real, 2026-08-03)
Run locally:
bash
1git clone https://github.com/ilides/cortex # or use local repo2cd"cortex ai"3source .venv/bin/activate
4python scripts/validate_spartan.py --model ../cortex/models/Spartan-1.2-2B-MLX-8bit
Results on Apple Silicon (5 cases, max_tokens=256):
Test
Category
Result
Speed
Explain async/await
chat
✅ pass
48 tok/s
Binary search in Rust
coding
❌ fail*
45 tok/s
Create Amazon-style HTML
agentic
❌ fail**
27 tok/s
Find TODO in src/
agentic
✅ pass
23 tok/s
Write styles.css dark theme
agentic
❌ fail**
28 tok/s
Summary: 2/5 passed · avg 34.3 tok/s
* Rust code was generated inside a fenced block but regex missed fn due to thinking preamble.
** Model outputs prose/CSS in code blocks instead of [Tool: Write] calls for file-creation prompts. Path safety checks (no /Users/, no /Desktop/) did pass.