Zora is an open 8B language model (built on Qwen3-8B) for 12 languages of the Balkans and Southeast Europe: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Macedonian, Slovenian, Albanian, Montenegrin, Bulgarian, Greek, Turkish, Romanian, Hungarian.

Zora is not built to be the biggest model — it is built to be honest, in-language, and multi-perspective:

thinks in the target language instead of pivoting through English,
shows several perspectives on contested topics instead of one national view,
and above all: admits when it doesn't know instead of inventing facts.

2 · The development story (v1.0 → v1.1 → v1.11 → v1.12)

Version	Languages	BalkanBench	State
v1.0	6	—	first public release
v1.1	12	—	trained from scratch — but hallucinated facts (invented book titles, wrong authors). Never released.
v1.11	12	84/156	the honest fix: says "I don't know", searches when unsure. #1 Balkan model.
v1.12	12	85/156	the depth fix: better tool-calling, structured IDK, in-language thinking, RAG integration.

v1.1 taught us the key lesson — a small model can't memorize every fact, so instead of faking it, v1.11 was retrained to be honest. v1.12 builds on that with deeper training and RAG.

3 · What's New in v1.12

Three Fixes from v1.11

Fix 1: IDK Mass Training (30-40% of SFT data)

v1.11 had only 9% "I don't know" examples → model still guessed on unknowns
v1.12: 216 curated IDK examples × 3 difficulty levels × 12 languages
Result: Structured native-language refusals with reasoning ("Nemam pouzdanih podataka... neću da izmišljam")

Fix 2: Tool-Calling Cascade (769 examples)

Priority chain: RAG (local docs) → web_search → IDK
v1.11 had ZERO tool-calling examples (4get-cleanup removed everything)
Result: SEARCH 4/12 → 7/12 (+3), TOOLBASE 11/12 → 12/12 (+1)

Fix 3: In-Language Thinking Traces (10K synthetic via Gemini)

Reasoning in the target language (Serbian thinks Serbian, Croatian thinks Croatian)
v1.11 had empty think blocks — no reasoning data at all
Result: Better structured responses across all axes

Additional Improvements

MAXLEN 8192 (8× longer than v1.11's 1024) — longer context, thinking traces have room
RAG Integration — Zora can now use Retrieval-Augmented Generation
CPT capped at 150 steps — faster, more stable training

4 · Benchmark (BalkanBench, 13 axes × 12 languages)

🔬 BalkanBench is open — test any model yourself: https://github.com/olivilo/balkanbench Deterministic scoring (script / language / keywords / numbers).

Axis-by-Axis Comparison (v1.11 → v1.12)

Axis	v1.11	v1.12	Δ	What changed
FACT	1/12	0/12	↓1	8B capacity limit; IDK now says "I don't know" instead of guessing
HALLU	10/12	10/12	=	Quality improved: structured native-language refusals (see Deep Dive below)
DETAIL	8/12	10/12	↑2	Better at recognizing fabricated content — IDK training at work
GRADED	0/12	0/12	=	Partial knowledge + honest uncertainty still hard for 8B
TEACH	12/12	12/12	=	Perfect — remains a core strength
REASON	11/12	11/12	=	Strong arithmetic reasoning
LOGIC	0/12	0/12	=	8B capacity limit — needs v2 (27B)
LOGIC2	0/12	0/12	=	Same as LOGIC
ANALYSIS	0/12	0/12	=	Same as LOGIC
INSTRUCT	12/12	11/12	↓1	Minor regression, within noise
LONGFORM	12/12	12/12	=	Perfect — remains a core strength
SEARCH	4/12	7/12	↑3	Tool-cascade works: RAG → web_search → IDK
TOOLBASE	11/12	12/12	↑1	Perfect: answers basics without calling tools
TOTAL	81/156	85/156	+4

Per-Language Scores

Language	v1.11	v1.12	Δ
sq (Albanian)	6/13	8/13	+2
cnr (Montenegrin)	6/13	8/13	+2
hu (Hungarian)	6/13	8/13	+2
bg (Bulgarian)	7/13	8/13	+1
bs (Bosnian)	8/13	8/13	=
hr (Croatian)	8/13	8/13	=
ro (Romanian)	7/13	7/13	=
tr (Turkish)	7/13	7/13	=
el (Greek)	8/13	7/13	-1
sr (Serbian)	8/13	7/13	-1
mk (Macedonian)	5/13	5/13	=
sl (Slovenian)	5/13	4/13	-1

Biggest winners: Albanian, Montenegrin, Hungarian (+2 each) — the languages that benefited most from IDK + tool-training.

Charts

Ranking	Evolution	Axis Matrix
Ranking	Evolution v1.11 → v1.12	v1.12 axis matrix

Delta (v1.11 → v1.12)	What Each Axis Tests
Delta	Explanation

5 · Deep Dive: Why HALLU Stayed at 10/12

The HALLU score (10/12) didn't change numerically — but the quality of how Zora says "I don't know" improved dramatically. Here's why the score stayed flat while the behavior improved, and what it would take to reach 12/12.

Why the Score Didn't Move

1. The 10/12 were already good. v1.11 already achieved 10/12 on HALLU. The test asks: "Does the model say one of the IDK marker words when asked about a fabricated person?" v1.11 already did that correctly for 10 of 12 languages. The last 2 languages (Macedonian, Slovenian) have the smallest training data — an 8B model simply doesn't have enough capacity for these underrepresented languages.

2. IDK training improved QUALITY, not SCORE. The BalkanBench HALLU test only checks: "Does the model say 'ne znam' / 'ne mogu da potvrdim' / etc.?" — a binary yes/no. What actually improved:

Before (v1.11)	After (v1.12)
Short, sometimes truncated refusals	Full-sentence, structured refusals
Sometimes answered in English	Always answers in the question's language
No reasoning given	Explains why it can't answer
"Ne znam."	"Nemam pouzdanih podataka o 'X'. Ne mogu da potvrdim da postoji u pouzdanim izvorima, pa neću da izmišljam."

This is a qualitative leap — the model sounds more natural, more trustworthy, and more helpful. But the binary score can't capture that.

3. The real hallucination improvement is in DETAIL (+2). DETAIL measures something harder: "A real author wrote a book that doesn't exist — does the model invent a plot?" v1.12 went from 8→10/12 here. This is where IDK training shows its real value — the model now recognizes it cannot describe a non-existent work, instead of making something up. The two new winners: Bulgarian and Hungarian.

4. LOGIC/ANALYSIS = 0/12 is a reasoning problem, not a hallucination problem. These axes test multi-step logic (cats-and-mice riddles, percentage calculations). The model doesn't hallucinate — it genuinely can't do the math. This is an 8B capacity limit, not a training issue.

What Would Move HALLU to 12/12

Approach	Expected Impact	Effort
Larger model (v2 = 27B)	+1-2 languages (mk, sl)	High (new training run)
More IDK examples for mk/sl specifically	+0-1 languages	Medium (data generation)
RLHF with human feedback on refusal quality	Better quality (not score)	High (human annotation)
DPO (Direct Preference Optimization)	+1-2 languages	Medium (preference pairs)
More CPT data for mk/sl	+0-1 languages	High (data collection)

Bottom line: The 8B model is near its ceiling for HALLU. The real gains in v2 (27B) will come from more parameters, not more training tricks.

6 · 🆕 RAG Feature

New in v1.12: Zora integrates with RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) — a system that lets Zora search through a local knowledge base before answering.

What RAG gives Zora

87,284 chunks across 12 languages: Wikidata, Wikipedia, News Archive, EU Law, Statistics
Live endpoint: https://rag.ai.in.rs
Self-hostable: Clone the pipeline from https://github.com/olivilo/zora-v1.12

How it works

The tool-cascade: Zora first checks its RAG knowledge base (local documents, laws, statistics), then falls back to web search if needed, and finally says "I don't know" if neither helps.

User question → RAG (local docs) → web_search (live) → IDK (honest refusal)

Why this matters

8B models can't memorize everything — RAG gives Zora access to current, authoritative data without retraining
Every answer carries source + date + license — full transparency
Self-hostable: any organization can run their own Zora RAG with their own documents

7 · Training Details

Parameter	Value
Base model	Qwen3-8B (Alibaba Cloud, Apache-2.0)
CPT steps	150 (capped, not full epoch)
SFT examples	9,379 (2 epochs)
MAXLEN	8192 (8× longer than v1.11)
QLoRA	r=16, lora_alpha=16, 4bit
Data composition	30-40% IDK, 15% Tool-calling, 10% Thinking, 35-45% Standard tasks
Infrastructure	Modal A100-80GB, ~4h total, ~$5-10
Quantizations	Q5_K_M (5.4GB, recommended), Q6_K (6.7GB), Q8_0 (8.7GB)

8 · Usage

Ollama (recommended):

bash

ollama pull olivilo/zora:v1.12
ollama run olivilo/zora:v1.12

HuggingFace Transformers:

python

from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer
tok = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained("sovasoft/zora-v1.12")
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained("sovasoft/zora-v1.12", device_map="auto")

GGUF (llama.cpp / Ollama manual): Download Q5_K_M, Q6_K, or Q8_0 from HuggingFace. Avoid Q4 and below — heavy quantization made the model hallucinate in our tests.

9 · Limitations

8B capacity: FACT, LOGIC, ANALYSIS are structurally weak — more parameters needed (v2 = 27B)
Quantization: use Q5_K_M / Q6_K / Q8_0 only. Q4 and below degrade honesty.
Smaller languages (mk, sl) have less training data — expect lower quality
No real-time knowledge without RAG/web-search — the model's memory has a cutoff date
Multi-step reasoning is unreliable — always verify critical calculations

10 · Benchmark Transparency & Limitations

BalkanBench is Sovasoft's own benchmark — designed, built, and scored by the same team that built Zora. This means:

Design bias: The 13 axes (FACT, HALLU, DETAIL, etc.) were chosen to highlight Zora's strengths. A different benchmark design would produce different rankings.
Scoring bias: The scoring functions in matrix_ollama.py are our own. How we define "correct" may favor Zora's training profile.
No frontier comparison: We compare only against open models (7-32B). Frontier models (GPT-4, Claude, Gemini) would outperform Zora — this benchmark is designed to evaluate within the open-source Balkan model ecosystem.
Selection bias: We include models where Zora competes well. Inclusion criteria are not random.
Training data overlap: Some benchmark questions may overlap with Zora's training data, which could inflate scores.

What the scores DO show: Zora v1.12 is the strongest open-source model we tested on our benchmark for 12 Balkan languages. It outperforms 3-4× larger models on BalkanBench v1.1 — a meaningful result for the open-source ecosystem, but not a claim of universal superiority.

What the scores do NOT show: That Zora is better than frontier models, that these rankings generalize beyond our test design, or that the scoring methodology is independent.

10 · What's Next: v2

	v1.12 (now)	v2 (planned)
Base	Qwen3-8B	Qwen3.8-27B
BalkanBench	85/156	Target: 100+/156
LOGIC/ANALYSIS	0/12	Target: 4-6/12
HALLU	10/12	Target: 12/12
Reasoning	Basic	Full chain-of-thought training

11 · Acknowledgements

Zora exists because of open source. We give our formal, heartfelt thanks:

Above all, to the Qwen team at Alibaba — for developing and open-sourcing Qwen3 (Apache-2.0), the foundation model Zora is built upon. Without their generosity, Zora would not exist.
To the platforms and structures that made this possible — Kaggle, Modal, HuggingFace, Ollama, Unsloth — for the compute, the tools, and the open infrastructure.
To the open-source community, for the models, code, and knowledge freely shared with everyone.
To the people of the Balkans — whose languages, voices, stories and perspectives are Zora's very heart.
To rag.ai.in.rs for the RAG infrastructure and 87,284 chunks of Balkan knowledge.
And to all that is.

зора — the dawn belongs to everyone.

12 · Citation

bibtex

@software{zora_v112,
  author       = {Vignjevic, Oliver},
  title        = {Zora v1.12: An Open, Honest LLM for the Balkans \& Southeast Europe},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Hugging Face},
  url          = {https://huggingface.co/sovasoft/zora-v1.12},
  license      = {Apache-2.0},
  base_model   = {Qwen/Qwen3-8B},
  languages    = {sr, hr, bs, mk, sl, sq, cnr, bg, el, tr, ro, hu}
}

Sovasoft · ai.in.rs · one to unite them all