01What MiniMax M3.1 Flash Is and How It Works

MiniMax M3.1 Flash is an AI model that does office work three times faster than the previous version and costs much less. It was built to handle tasks like sales follow-ups, sorting messages, and pulling data for reports. You can use it all day without slowing down, and it works for free inside OpenCode.

The model has 428 billion parameters but only uses 23 billion for each word. This makes it fast and cheap. Think of it like a huge office where only the experts who know the topic help.

Less work per word means more speed and lower cost. MiniMax says normal output runs over 200 tokens per second, about three times faster than the old M3 model.

02Main Features of MiniMax M3.1 Flash

The biggest new feature is the thinking dial. M3.1 Flash always thinks before it answers. You cannot turn thinking off.

But you can choose how hard it thinks: low, medium, high, X high, or max. On the Automation Bench test, low scored 52.8 and max scored 62.8. So you pick the level that fits your job.

  • Handles text, pictures, and video with its own vision system. It scored 91 on vision tests.
  • One flat price all the way up to 1 million tokens. The old M3 doubled its price after 512,000 tokens.
  • Built for office work like sales, marketing, customer support, and HR tasks inside real business apps.
  • Costs 15 cents per million tokens going in and 60 cents per million going out. Cached reads are only 1.5 cents per million.

03How to Set Up MiniMax M3.1 Flash

Getting started with MiniMax M3.1 Flash is simple. The episode shows you can use it for free inside OpenCode. Follow these steps:

  1. Go to OpenCode (the platform where M3.1 Flash is available for free).
  2. Select the model named Space Bunny (it is an early version of M3.1 Flash).
  3. Plug it into your agentic operating system. The episode shows a zip file setup with a video tutorial.
  4. Choose your thinking level: low, medium, high, X high, or max. Start with max for hard tasks.
  5. Set up your workflows. The agent OS already has tools for video, SEO, and AI advertising.
  6. Test it on a simple task like reading an email. Then scale up to longer jobs.

You can also run it on your own machine. MiniMax says the model weights landed on October 23rd. That means you can download and run it locally.

04How to Use MiniMax M3.1 Flash for Office Work

The episode shows you use M3.1 Flash for tasks that steal your time. Examples include sales follow-ups, sorting messages, and pulling data for reports. The model works as a background worker that runs around the clock.

Inside the agentic operating system, you can switch between free models. M3.1 Flash is great as a cheap, fast worker for hundreds of small steps. For example, checking emails, looking up leads, or checking calendars.

Each step costs under five cents on Automation Bench. You set the thinking dial based on the job. Low is enough for simple tasks like seeing an email.

Max is better for figuring out why client leads dropped last month.

The model also handles vision tasks. It can understand what is in an image, not just read words off it. You can send it pictures or videos as part of your workflow.

05Results and Comparisons from the Episode

MiniMax ran its own tests on M3.1 Flash. On the Automation Bench test, M3.1 Flash scored 62.2. Claude Opus 5 scored 50.3.

GPT 5.6 Solved scored 45.8. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash got 54.8. GLM 5.3 got 48.8.

The cheap flash model came on top for office work.

On a long careful job test with lots of files and steps, M3.1 Flash scored 76.2. That ties with Opus 5. On the coding test SWE-bench, M3.1 got 73.7.

GPT 5.6 Solved got 73.0. On OSworld V2, which tests using a computer like a person, it scored 61.7.

But on Terminal Bench 4.1 (high-level command line jobs), M3.1 Flash scored only 33.8. Opus 5 scored 51.8. On NL2 repo (building a whole project from plain English), Opus 5 was way ahead.

The episode says Claude is still stronger for big, tricky builds.

06Tips, Limits, and Mistakes to Avoid with M3.1 Flash

The episode warns about one big mistake: you must set the thinking dial correctly. If a tool tries to turn thinking off, it gets an error. M3.1 Flash always thinks.

So pick the right level for each job. Low is fine for simple emails. Max is better for complex analysis.

  • Do not use M3.1 Flash for high-level coding or terminal jobs. It scores poorly on Terminal Bench and NL2 repo.
  • All scores come from MiniMax itself. Nobody outside has rechecked them. Take them as MiniMax's numbers.
  • Treat the 70% cost savings claim as MiniMax's number. They have not shown exactly how they worked it out.
  • The model is not for building 3D worlds or frontier-level work like Opus 5.5. Use it for long, hard office tasks that need lots of tokens.

07Who MiniMax M3.1 Flash Is For and Why It Matters

MiniMax M3.1 Flash is for business owners who want to offload time-stealing office work. It is cheap enough to run all day and fast enough that agents do not stall. The episode says it is great for sales follow-ups, sorting messages, and pulling data for reports.

It matters because most people had to choose between smart and pricey or cheap and weaker. M3.1 Flash closes that gap. You can use it for free inside OpenCode.

The episode shows it plugged into an agentic operating system that works around the clock. Over 3,300 business owners already use this system. Many had never used AI before.

You do not need to be technical to start.