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13 AI Coding Models Tested: Safety Benchmark Results KDS

A developer built a benchmark to test whether AI coding models change their behavior when given a safety skill, measuring the Keelwright Score (KDS) as execution rate times discrimination rate. Results show poolside/laguna-s-2.1 scored highest at 83, while weak models like Cohere North Mini Code scored 0 because they couldn't run tests. The benchmark revealed that even top models like Claude Opus 5 benefit from structured safety checks.

read3 min views1 publishedAug 12, 2026

Every AI coding agent is benchmarked on how well it writes code. Nobody benchmarks what happens when it writes bad code β€” and whether a safety skill actually changes that.

So I built a test.

Same task. Same model. Two runs:

If the treatment produces a meaningfully different output β†’ DISCRIMINATES (the skill changed behavior).

If both produce the same correct output β†’ NO-DIFF (the model already did it right).

Keelwright Score (KDS) = Execution Rate Γ— Discrimination Rate / 100

A high KDS means the skill adds something the model wouldn't do alone. A low KDS means the model already handles it (or can't run the tests at all).

Model Tier Tests KDS
poolside/laguna-s-2.1 STRONG 18 83
stepfun/step-3.7-flash MEDIUM 6 67
nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra STRONG 5 40
deepseek-v4-flash STRONG 14 29
kimi-k3 STRONG 12 25
inclusionai/ling-3.0-flash UNKNOWN 18 22
mimo-v2.5 MEDIUM 11 18
claude-opus-4-8 STRONG 6 17
claude-opus-5 STRONG 15 13
tencent/hy3 STRONG 34 9
cohere/north-mini-code WEAK β€” 0
nvidia/nemotron-nano-9b WEAK β€” 0
nvidia/nemotron-3-super-120b-a12b STRONG 2* PARTIAL

*Nemotron-3-super: PARTIAL run (2/18 tests due to tool-call limits). Both DISCRIMINATES; full KDS pending.

Step 3.7 Flash (MEDIUM tier) scored KDS 67 β€” higher than every STRONG model except Laguna S 2.1. The skill caught SQL injection (R1) and package hallucination (R8) before code was written β€” things the model didn't check on its own.

If you're using a medium-tier model, a safety skill isn't nice-to-have. It's catching entire categories of bugs the model doesn't know to avoid.

Cohere North Mini Code and Nemotron Nano 9B both scored KDS 0. Not because they passed the tests β€” because they couldn't run them. They claimed success without executing anything. The integrity gate caught every fake report.

If you're using a weak model, you can't trust self-reports. Verification has to be mechanical.

Laguna S 2.1 (78.5% SWE-bench) scored KDS 83 β€” the skill added 15 out of 18 discriminating behaviors. Even the best model missed security gates, loop design, compaction, and reward-hacking resistance.

Claude Opus 5 (96.0% SWE-bench Verified) scored KDS 13 β€” it's better by default, but still benefited from structured safety checks.

SWE-bench measures feature delivery, not safety discipline.

Nemotron-3-super could only complete 2 of 18 tests before hitting tool-call limits. Both tests DISCRIMINATED β€” but I can't calculate a full KDS. The evaluation itself exposed reliability issues in the model's agent loop.

Every result file is machine-verified by validate_run.py

. No self-reports. The full dataset is in qa-results/

.

Key rules:

skill_view(name='keelwright')

All 28 gates run automatically. No install. No config.

GitHub: ratingtesting/keelwright

All results verified on disk. MIT-0 licensed β€” free to use, modify, and redistribute.

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