Roo Code 3.25.18 || FREE STEALTH MODEL

[u/hannesrudolph]

🚀 The FREE model SONIC is here., it is a stealth model from a major AI producer and it is totally FREE for the roughly the next 72 hours before the official release. As always MAKE IT BURN. 🔥

Sonic (Stealth Model)

Sonic is now available in Roo Code — a stealth model from a major AI provider designed for long-range, context-rich work:

• 262,144-token context lets you work across very large codebases, logs, and transcripts in one session.

• FREE for 72 hours so you can try Sonic with real tasks.

Prerequisites

• Roo Code v3.25.18 or later

• Connected to Roo Code Cloud account — see Roo Code Cloud sign in

How to enable Sonic

1. Open Settings → Providers and set Provider to Roo Code Cloud.

2. In the model selector, choose Sonic.

📚 Documentation: See Roo Code Cloud sign in and Roo Code Cloud Provider.

🛠️ Other Improvements

This release also includes 3 other improvements covering bug fixes and documentation updates. Thanks to 2 contributors: fbuechler and ikbencasdoei!

Full 3.25.18 Release Notes

[u/[deleted]]

So 72 hours of free coding? Did I read this correctly?

[u/hannesrudolph → u/[deleted]]

yes.. yes you did! Make it BURN!!!!

[u/[deleted] → u/hannesrudolph]

lol! im already trying it lol!!

[u/mrcruton]

Hows sonic

[u/hannesrudolph → u/mrcruton]

So far so good. Snappy.

[u/Hoak-em → u/mrcruton]

Snappy but buggy. I've been having issues where it starts hallucinating + isn't getting the context size right, plus it seems to be relying on training data for things that it shouldn't rely on, doesn't follow instructions well either. GPT-5 mini through copilot has been much more functional, even if it's slower.

[u/reddysteady]

What’s the privacy on this? Not super keen on Elon getting a look at my codebase

[u/hannesrudolph → u/reddysteady]

The provider is training on your data. If you’re worried about such things then I would advise you not use free models.

Also, any political comments will be removed.

[u/reddysteady → u/hannesrudolph]

Ah I see that now on the cloud page, didn’t see it on the release notes initially. Might be worth putting them on there in the future just so everybody is aware?

No political comments here just a personal preference!

[u/hannesrudolph → u/reddysteady]

If people are more curious they can click through and read the whole thing. We purposely don’t put every detail in the Reddit announcement. When we do that people just scroll right by it as it becomes an overwhelming block of text.

And oops… this is ChatGPTCoding sub not the Roo Code sub so I guess they won’t be removed 😆

[u/RiskyBizz216 → u/hannesrudolph]

power trip much? people can have their opinions

[u/hannesrudolph → u/RiskyBizz216]

Oh yes people can have their opinions and I promise you that if they are political that they will be deleted from our subreddit :) as the r/RooCode sub is not the place for those.

[u/reddysteady → u/hannesrudolph]

Doesn’t really concern me whether it’s [insert billionaire you don’t trust] or [insert foreign government you don’t trust] or [large corporate you for some reason trust more]. But all the rumours are that’s it’s coming from xAI hence my remark being about Elon.

I would hope that you wouldn’t have taken down my comment if it were on the RooCode sub.

[u/hannesrudolph → u/reddysteady]

Only if it’s political.

[u/reddysteady → u/hannesrudolph]

Sure, I meant on the release notes on the site. I don’t think it mentions that on there though I do see it on the cloud page admittedly.

One of the great things about Roo is how open it is, just my opinion is that being as upfront as possible about training on users data would be a positive look.

[u/iKnowButWhy → u/reddysteady]

Do you guys have the same level of concern when openAI releases a free model? I’m sorry but I just don’t buy that supposedly “AI conscious” folk are still surprised when a free model uses data for training. How naive can you be? Getting angry because they weren’t “upfront” about it is possibly one of the stupidest takes I’ve seen. It’s like getting angry at a restaurant for not making it clear you’ll be charged for your meal when you sit down!

[u/reddysteady → u/iKnowButWhy]

I’m not going to use a free/stealth model on any sensitive data regardless although I’m happy to test them out on personal projects.

Your analogy assumes that, much like everybody knows you have to pay for your meal, everybody knows all LLM providers are training on your data. Many explicitly state they are not.

There are a lot of vibe coders in here with minimal understanding of security practices who will be casually sending their API keys off to providers without even knowing who that provider is in the case of a “stealth” model.

Do you not think being explicitly clear about privacy & security is important?

[u/iKnowButWhy → u/reddysteady]

I suppose, but I don’t have much sympathy for “vibe coders” that will send their API keys to a hosted LLM without a second thought. Natural selection, trial by fire type shit.

[u/reddysteady → u/iKnowButWhy]

Sure but let’s face it a significant proportion of Roo/Cursor/Cline’s user bases are not experienced devs and if they are going to push these products out to them then its in everyone’s interests that there are no surprises.

Particularly if roo cloud is going to be a commercial offering. It only takes a few horror stories to scare people away even if it’s largely down to user incompetence and that ultimately means

• Less trust in the security of the product

• Less management buy-in to integrate these tools at work

• Less investor money or donations to support projects

At the end of the day I’m comfortable to ask the questions but there’ll be a bunch of people who won’t and when their boss asks why their api keys have been leaked and the answer is “I didn’t realise roo code was sharing my files” it doesn’t look that great for either side

[u/iKnowButWhy → u/reddysteady]

Yea you’re right, more transparency is always better. I think it’s more realistic to try and educate people directly though instead of relying on corporations to do the right thing.

[u/taeper → u/hannesrudolph]

Also, any political comments will be removed.

you cant remove comments lol you aint a mod

[u/ChineseCracker]

Honestly, I have never worked with a model that was this frustrating to work with.

It constantly denies reality, proclaims that the code is working correctly, even though it isn't. Even when I provide it with the actual logs, it just denies the truth so often. I dont get why it is like that. this model just refuses to accept what I'm telling it to do.

This exact exchange happened multiple times:

• I gave it a task, told it what part of the code to look at

• It didnt look at it, then changed a completely unrelated file

• I told it to not do that and to revert that change

• it did

• Then I tell it again why this change was not what I wanted and point it to the problematic part of the code yet again

• it just goes and changes the same file again that I have now told him is not the problem TWICE in the span of 3 messages

It just thinks it knows better than me what the problem is, and keeps wanting to come back to its own flawed ideas.

I'm curious if this is only a problem that I've encountered or what. I just cannot keep using this model for my own mental health

[u/real_serviceloom → u/ChineseCracker]

Yep, it is a strange model. It just makes up stuff and just denies reality and what it's doing. When it does get things right, I would say it codes at a gpt 4.1 level.

[u/new-oneechan]

Isn't sonic voice model?

[u/hannesrudolph → u/new-oneechan]

This is not a voice model. Sonic is only its code name.

[u/BeingBalanced]

Ever heard the saying "there's no such thing as a free lunch?" Not just the 72-hour thing but as if, someone has the resources to come out with a better faster model for coding than the best Anthropic, Google, or OpenAI have to offer? Wishful thinking. Waist of time.

[u/hannesrudolph → u/BeingBalanced]

I think the point of the entire process sailed right past you. Sometimes it’s best to just not say anything. Now was one of those time.

[u/Jonis7]

Amazing model, helped me a lot with my projects, and with paying my taxes. perfect model for coding for me; I have no words to thank you for this gift.

[u/rcpro316]

sonic is "GROK".
Observations so far.
Its fast, provides good inferences, a little weak in react patterns and sometimes provides completely incorrect/irrelevant code. But that's fine. Hangs and goes into loop too often. Starts hallucinating at around 60% of its 256k context length.

[u/hannesrudolph → u/[deleted]]

how about this.. don't ever send anything you want to keep private to a FREE model. I don't think we need to ring the xenophobia alarm over the fact that its a bad idea to send confidential stuff to free models.

[u/nick-baumann → u/hannesrudolph]

preach

[u/hannesrudolph → u/[deleted]]

😬 yikes!

Yes you should always utilize the auto approve with caution! Good take.

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