# Using Inkling

Inkling is Thinking Machines Lab's model tailored for Tinker. It is a general-purpose model that can code, reason, and call tools. Model effort can be controlled by a float. Image and audio inputs are also supported.

Use [`tml-renderers`](https://tinker-docs.thinkingmachines.ai/cookbook/inkling/tml-renderers/) to construct all of these inputs.

Messages can be OpenAI-compatible Cookbook dictionaries or typed `tml_renderers.chat` objects. Use the format that matches your application.

## Get started

Install the Cookbook with the `inkling` extra, which pulls in the `tml_renderers` package that Inkling's renderer and scripts depend on:

```
uv pip install 'tinker-cookbook[inkling]'
```

Set the model name in your existing Cookbook workflow:

```
model_name = "thinkingmachines/Inkling"
```

We recommend sweeping learning rate and [thinking effort](https://tinker-docs.thinkingmachines.ai/cookbook/inkling/thinking-effort/) to adapt Inkling to your use case. Use [`sample_reasoning.py`](https://github.com/thinking-machines-lab/tinker-cookbook/blob/main/tinker_cookbook/scripts/inkling/sample_reasoning.py) to compare standard effort values.

The Cookbook selects Inkling's recommended renderer automatically. Each guide links to its corresponding runnable example.

## Learn more

- **[tml-renderers](https://tinker-docs.thinkingmachines.ai/cookbook/inkling/tml-renderers/)** — Message formats, tools, rendering, and training.
- **[Thinking effort](https://tinker-docs.thinkingmachines.ai/cookbook/inkling/thinking-effort/)** — Effort controls, recommended sweep values, and scaling results.
- **[Audio](https://tinker-docs.thinkingmachines.ai/cookbook/inkling/audio/)** and **[Images](https://tinker-docs.thinkingmachines.ai/cookbook/inkling/images/)** — Multimodal input requirements.
- **[Rendering tutorial](https://tinker-docs.thinkingmachines.ai/tutorials/core-concepts/rendering/)** — How renderers bridge messages and model tokens.
- **[Tinker sampling quickstart](https://tinker-docs.thinkingmachines.ai/tinker/quickstart/)** — The lower-level sampling flow.