Windsurf has unveiled the SWE-1 model family in its Wave 9 update, introducing SWE-1, SWE-1-lite, and SWE-1-mini — models built to power end-to-end software engineering, not just code completion. These models handle incomplete projects, long-running tasks, and tool integration across IDEs, terminals, browsers, and collaborative sessions.
🔧 What’s New?
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SWE-1: Premium full-scale model rivaling Claude 3.5 Sonnet, currently free to paid users.
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SWE-1-lite: High-quality model replacing Cascade Base, now free for all, including on the free tier.
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SWE-1-mini: Lightweight, ultra-fast assistant for passive/predictive coding support.
🧠 Smarter Workflows
SWE-1 tracks and understands development flows in real-time, from edits and terminal commands to collaborative chat. Its flow awareness enables better reasoning, context tracking, and interactive debugging across multi-tool environments.
📊 Performance
SWE-1 is benchmarked to match top-tier commercial models while outperforming many mid-sized open-weight options in both collaborative and autonomous programming tasks.