Chinese AI giant MiniMax has announced a new generation of M models: M3.

MiniMax M3
https://www.minimax.io/blog/minimax-m3
https://www.minimax.io/models/text/m3
MiniMax M3 is built with an emphasis on deep reasoning, coding, and autonomous pipelines. It accepts text+image+video as input and produces text as output. The model is specifically optimized for agentic workflows and complex, long-term tasks rather than simple chat interactions.

MiniMax Sparse Attention (MSA) is a new sparse attention mechanism that radically reduces computational costs for long contexts (approximately 1/20th of the previous generation). It supports up to 1M tokens, with a guaranteed minimum of 512K in the cheaper API version. Token Plans are available (starting at $20/month), with a highlighted $50/month option.

Benchmarks look impressive: SWE-Bench Pro ~59% and Terminal-Bench 2.1 ~66%. This is on par with GPT-5.5 and Gemini 3.1 Pro, trailing only Claude Opus 4.8.

There is no active discussion on Hacker News yet.

MiniMax Code Updates
https://code.minimax.io/
With the M3 update, MiniMax Code has also received a significant upgrade, fully utilizing the model's capabilities: long context, agentic skills, and native multimodality. The program can not only generate code but also create documents, PDFs, slides, tables, and icons. Thanks to multimodality, MiniMax Code supports "computer use" (controlling the computer).

The concept is built around delegation - you don't write code alongside the AI; you manage it. It uses a Producer + Verifier adversarial loop where agents constantly generate, reflect, check, and fix errors in real-time. There is a "Smart Authorize" option to avoid manual monitoring of every agent action.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBHFGeU18MI

There is native support for MCP servers to connect external databases and documentation. It features a skills marketplace and integration with bots in Telegram, WeChat, and Lark for managing agents from a phone. Autonomous operation for several days without human intervention is possible, as well as scheduled task execution.

#minimax #agenticcoding #desktopapp