Model purposes
The coarse classification Syntax uses to know how each model should be served.
A model purpose is the coarse classification of what a model is for. Syntax uses model purpose to decide:
- Which serving engine is right for the model.
- Whether the model surfaces as a tool to the main agent (and which tool name).
- Which UI surfaces should expose it (Catalog filters, Party Builder capability scoring, etc.).
The current purposes
| Purpose | What it is |
|---|---|
| Generation | Text generation — the LLMs your harness chats with. |
| Embedding | Sentence and code embeddings for retrieval. |
| Reranking | Listwise reranking on top of retrieval results. |
| OCR | Extract text from images. |
| ImageProcessing | Style transfer, restoration, adjustment. |
| VideoProcessing | Temporal segmentation and video Q&A. |
| ImageGeneration | Text-to-image and image-to-image diffusion. |
| VideoGeneration | Text-to-video and image-to-video. |
| Segmentation | Pixel-precise segmentation for images and video. |
| TTS | Text-to-speech synthesis. |
| AudioGeneration | Music, effects, and V2A Foley. |
| MeshRecovery | 3D mesh from images or video. |
| UIGrounding | Locate UI elements in screenshots. |
| AudioTranscription | Speech-to-text. |
| SpeechToSpeech | Voice transformation, style transfer. |
| TimeSeriesForecasting | Foundation-model time-series forecasting. |
Why this matters
When you compose a multi-model party, the Party Builder uses model purposes to:
- Show capability coverage — which purposes your party covers and where there are gaps.
- Suggest specialists for purposes the main agent doesn't cover well.
- Register the right tool name so the main agent can invoke each
specialist correctly (
generate_image,transcribe_audio,segment_image, etc.).
When you deploy a single model, the model purpose determines which serving engine Syntax picks — see Differentiators → Multi-engine inference.
How a new purpose lands
The set of purposes is expandable; new purposes are added as the model ecosystem grows. The most recent addition is TimeSeriesForecasting, covering foundation-model time-series forecasters. When a new purpose ships, it lights up automatically in the Catalog filters, the Party Builder capability scoring, and the engine routing.
Where to go next
- Catalog overview
- Models → Modalities — modality vs. purpose.
- Differentiators → Multi-model parties