---
hip: 0511
title: Model Families — Zen Generates, Enso Routes, Kai Decides
author: Hanzo AI
type: Informational
category: Core
status: Living
created: 2026-09-25
requires: HIP-0007, HIP-0039, HIP-0510, HIP-1211, HIP-1332
---

# HIP-0511: Model Families — Zen Generates, Enso Routes, Kai Decides

## Abstract

Hanzo's models fall into families by the job each does. **Zen** generates: the
open-weight generative family. **Enso** routes: the router family that picks what
serves each request. **Kai** decides: the typed decision model. **Policy**
governs: deterministic authority, not a model. **Sekai** models local world beliefs
and predicts consequences (HIP-0007); its experimental world runtime is in progress.
This HIP maps every family and
model line to its HIP, its API and where it runs, and states the order of one
request: Enso asks Kai before it asks Zen.

It is Living: amended when a model ships, moves or retires.

## Motivation

One name carries several things: "Enso" is a router, a SKU family, a diffusion
fork and a browser fork, and the public `hanzoai/kai-1` repositories hold
baseline weights, not Kai. A reader who wants to call a model, run one or cite
one needs one table that says what a name is, where its spec is, and whether it
exists.

## Specification

This HIP requires nothing; it describes. Status words: **shipped** (served, or
downloadable, now), **in progress** (code exists, nothing served), **upcoming**
(named, not built), **retiring**, **baseline** (not ours; used for comparison).
Every fact is checked with:

```sh
curl -s https://api.hanzo.ai/v1/models                           # Hanzo Cloud: what serves
curl -s 'https://huggingface.co/api/models?author=zenlm&limit=500' # open weights (public)
curl -s 'https://huggingface.co/api/models?author=hanzoai'
```

`zenlm` holds 85 repositories, 4 of them private; `hanzoai` holds 3.

### 1. Families

| Family | Job | Output | HIP | API |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zen | generates | text, code, embeddings, images, audio, video | HIP-0039 | `/v1/chat/completions`, `/v1/responses`, `/v1/messages`, `/v1/embeddings`, `/v1/rerank`, `/v1/images/*`, `/v1/audio/*`, `/v1/videos/*` |
| Enso | routes | a model per request | HIP-0510 | `model=auto` and the `enso*` ids on the wire above; `/v1/ai/router`, `/v1/ai/feedback` |
| Kai | decides | typed state: choice, score, predicate, defer | HIP-1332 | `POST /v1/decisions` |
| Sekai | models and predicts | local beliefs, rollouts and candidate-plan terms | HIP-0007 | `/v1/worlds`; experimental profile, not a generally served cloud family |
| Policy | governs | allow, ask, deny | HIP-1332 §10 | none of its own |

### 2. Zen

Open weights live under `zenlm/` on Hugging Face, licence and base per model
card. Hanzo Cloud serves the ids in the third column.

| Line | Open weights | Hanzo Cloud | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zen6 | `zenlm/zen6`, `zenlm/zen6-coder`, `zenlm/zen6-flash` | `zen6`, `zen6-coder` | shipped; HIP-0904 |
| Zen5.8 | none | `zen5.8`, `zen5.8-coder`, `zen5.8-spark`, `zen5.8-evo` | shipped, cloud only |
| Zen5 | GGUF: `zenlm/zen5-gguf`, `zen5-coder-gguf`, `zen5-mini-gguf`, `zen5-pro-gguf`, `zen5-max-gguf`, `zen5-nano-9B-gguf`; `zen5-flash-gguf` and three `zen5-nano` sizes private | `zen5`, `zen5-mini`, `zen5-flash`, `zen5-coder`, `zen5-pro`, `zen5-spark`, `zen5-evo` | shipped |
| Zen7 | none | none | upcoming; the successor to Satori; no repository, weights or spec |
| Satori | none (`zenlm/satori` is a video-generation scaffold on Open-Sora, never trained) | none | retiring; replaced by Zen7 |
| Vision-language | `zenlm/zen-vl-{4b,8b,30b}-{instruct,agent}`, `zenlm/zen3-vl` | `zen-vl` | shipped |
| Embedding | `zenlm/zen-embedding`, `zen-embedding-{0.6B,4B,8B}`, GGUF for 0.6B and 8B | `zen-embedding` | shipped |
| Guard | `zenlm/zen-guard`, `zen-guard-gen`, `zen-guard-gen-8b`, `zen-guard-stream`, `zen-guard-stream-4b`, `zen3-guard` | `zen-guard` | shipped |
| Reranker | `zenlm/zen-reranker`, `zen-reranker-{0.6B,4B,8B}` and their GGUF | not listed | open weights only |
| Speech | `zenlm/zen3-asr`, `zen3-asr-0.6B`, `zen3-asr-aligner`, `zen3-tts`, `zen3-tts-0.6B`, `zen3-tts-custom-voice`, `zen3-tts-voice-design`, `zen-dub-live` | not listed | open weights only |
| Image | `zenlm/zen3-image`, `zen3-image-fast`, `zen3-image-ssd`, `zen-image-edit` | not listed | open weights only |
| Video | `zenlm/zen-director`, `zen-world`, `zen-video-i2v` | not listed | open weights only |
| 3D, music | `zenlm/zen-3d`, `zen-musician` | not listed | open weights only |
| Earlier lines | `zenlm/zen-nano*`, `zen-eco*`, `zen-omni*`, `zen-pro`, `zen-agent-4b`, `zen-designer*`, `zen3-nano`, `zen3-omni`, `zen-finance`, `zen-legal`, `zen-medical`, `zen-sql`, `zen-multilingual`, `zen-translate`, `zen-translator`, `zen-blog`, `zen-scribe`, `zen-family` | not listed | open weights; not served |

Hanzo Cloud also lists `zen-free`.

### 3. Enso

| Member | HIP | API | Runs | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Router | HIP-0510 §1–§4 | `model=auto` (alias `zen-router`); the response header `X-Routed-Model` names what served | Hanzo Cloud (`hanzoai/ai`); the `xᵀWp` engine (`hanzoai/engine`) is built, not wired | shipped |
| SKUs | HIP-0510 §5 | `enso`, `enso-auto`, `enso-flash`, `enso-free`, `enso-pro`, `enso-ultra` | Hanzo Cloud only | shipped |
| Router model | HIP-0510 §8 | none | open weights (`zenlm/zen-router`); on no serving path | experimental |
| Enso Diffusion | HIP-0510 §8 | none | code only (`zenlm/enso`) | research code; no weights |
| Enso Browser | HIP-0510 §8 | none | none | unreleased private fork |

### 4. Kai

| Item | HIP | API | Runs | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kai, one line (`hanzoai/kai`) | HIP-1332 | `POST /v1/decisions` (§17); `enso.decide` in process (§13) | Hanzo Cloud only (§20) | shipped: kai-1 on `POST /v1/decisions` on api.hanzo.ai; code private; no checkpoint published |
| `hanzoai/kai-1`, `kai-1-multilingual`, `kai-1-agent` | HIP-1332 §18 | none | private on Hugging Face | baseline: Laya weights, byte-identical to upstream; the cards are titled Laya; not a Kai version, and not the served kai-1 |
| Laya, Jev | HIP-1332 §18 | none | upstream | baseline; not ours |

### 5. Other names

| Name | HIP | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Jin | HIP-0003 | not built: `hanzoai/jin` is archived and holds a copy of `LumenPallidium/jepa` (MIT), not Hanzo model code; no weights |
| HLLM | HIP-0002 | a specification; no model or weights exist |

### 6. One request, in order

HIP-1332 §13 makes Kai native to Enso. Enso splits every operation into a bounded
decision or generation:

```text
request ─▶ Enso
            ├─ bounded decision: model, context depth, tools, reasoning budget,
            │  stop, retry, escalate
            │     └─▶ Kai ─▶ typed answer ─▶ Policy (allow < ask < deny) ─▶ act
            │            └─ defer ─▶ Zen
            └─ generation ─▶ Zen, on the model Enso chose
```

A Decision Program (HIP-1332 §5) is the graph form of the same split. Its nodes are
deterministic, Kai, Zen, solver, simulation or human, and only the Zen nodes
generate, so an agent workflow spends generative compute only where generation is
the work.

The routing decision is the router's own policy (HIP-0510 §1): per-org
overrides, ε = 0.1 exploration, then the prefer table that the reward-mean trainer
rewrites every 15m. The `xᵀWp` engine is built (`hanzoai/engine`) but not wired
(`router.endpoint` is empty). Kai takes a decision over one program at a time,
`shadow`, then `advisory`, then `enforced` (HIP-1332 §13.1). No program has made
that move: no repository implements `enso.decide`.

### 7. Calling each family

```sh
# Enso picks the model; X-Routed-Model says which one served.
curl https://api.hanzo.ai/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $HANZO_API_KEY" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"model":"auto","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Summarize this diff."}]}'

# A Zen model by name.
curl https://api.hanzo.ai/v1/responses \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $HANZO_API_KEY" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"model":"zen6","input":"Write a failing test for this bug."}'

# Tell the router how it did (HIP-0510 §2).
curl https://api.hanzo.ai/v1/ai/feedback \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $HANZO_API_KEY" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"request_id":"<id from the response>","reward":1}'

# Kai (HIP-1332 §17).
curl https://api.hanzo.ai/v1/decisions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $HANZO_API_KEY" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"model":"kai","state":{"subject":"Charged twice this month"},
       "questions":{"team":{"type":"choice","instructions":"Which team handles this ticket?",
         "criteria":{"billing":"charges, refunds","technical":"errors, outages","account":"sign-in, access"}}}}'
```

### 8. Names that collide

- `zen-router` is both the gateway's alias for `auto` (HIP-0510 §1) and the router
  model `zenlm/zen-router`. The alias never calls the model.
- The Enso Browser tree still carries its upstream's name, "Zen Browser", which is
  also the generative family's name.
- `hanzoai/kai-1*` carry the Kai name and Laya weights.
- Enso names both the router family and Enso Diffusion, which does not route.

## Rationale

Families are split by job, not by architecture or vendor, because the job decides
the API and the cost. A generation spends tokens; a decision has a known answer
space and generates none. Putting routing and decisions in their own families lets a
request reach a generative model only when generation is the work.

## References

- HIP-0039 — Zen, the open-weight generative family; HIP-0904 — Zen6
- HIP-0510 — Enso, the router family
- HIP-1211 — AI, the model API
- HIP-1332 — Kai, the decision model and the decision plane
- HIP-0002 — HLLM; HIP-0003 — Jin

## Copyright

Released under CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.