Microsoft made MAI-Code-1.1-Flash available to download and run locally, with 3-bit quantization and a 256K context window. The small coding model, already in production in GitHub Copilot since August, claims 25% faster token streaming and 25% fewer tokens per task than the original MAI-Code-1.

The company also announced experimental on-device access coming to the GitHub Copilot app, Copilot CLI and Visual Studio Code by the end of October. Running it locally requires workstation-class hardware — Microsoft points to machines like the Surface Laptop Ultra with 128GB of memory.

The move extends Microsoft's in-house model strategy into on-device territory. MAI-Code-1.1-Flash costs a fraction of its predecessor — $0.20 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output — undercutting the Chinese coding models Microsoft had cited as competitive pressure when it launched the model in August.