# Instruments and Specifications

On The Grid, Instruments are the standardized contracts that turn inference into a tradeable commodity. Each Instrument defines a minimum performance floor across intelligence, latency, throughput, context window, and output length. When you buy Units of an Instrument, you're buying a quality guarantee - not a specific model. Any supplier model that meets or exceeds the specification can fulfill your request, which is what enables open competition and market-driven pricing.

### **Inference as a New Asset Class**

An **Instrument** is a contract between a **Consumer** and a **Supplier**.

* When you **buy** an Instrument, you are buying the right to consume a standardized amount of inference at or above a clear quality and performance floor.
* When a supplier **sells** an Instrument, they are committing to deliver that inference from any of their models that meet or exceed the Instrument Specifications.

#### Why this matters

This structure turns inference into a true commodity:

* It replaces provider specific API contracts with **grade based** contracts.
* It makes Units **fungible** across suppliers and models, as long as they meet the same spec.
* It enables a **single** **venue** where these contracts can be **traded** with transparent prices.

### **Trading, Delivery, and Consumption Properties**

Each Instrument comes with three categories of properties:

* **Trading Properties**
  * The atomic Unit size (1 million tokens).
  * How Units can be bought and sold on the CLOB.
  * How Units move between Trading and Consumption via Sweeps.
* **Delivery Properties**
  * Minimum service level benchmarks for intelligence, latency, throughput, context window, and output length.
  * Requirements around uptime and error rates.
  * Rules for fallback routing and credits if delivery fails.
* **Consumption Properties**
  * How the 4 hour consumption window works after transfer.
  * How tokens are metered.
  * How rate limits are applied at the API edge.

Deep dive into the below sections to read more about Instruments and their Benchmarks:

* [**Current Instruments: Text Prime & Text Standard** ](https://thegrid.ai/docs/introduction/instruments-and-specifications/current-instruments-text-max-text-prime-and-text-standard) **-** Compares our initial Instruments and helps you choose between speed-optimized Fast Inference and quality-optimized Prime Inference. 
* [**Instrument Specifications**](https://thegrid.ai/docs/introduction/instruments-and-specifications/instrument-specifications-latest) - Lists the key metrics - intelligence, latency, throughput, context, output length, and reliability - that define each Instrument’s performance floor, and mentions the current benchmark as of January 2026.
* [**Evolution of Specifications** ](https://thegrid.ai/docs/introduction/instruments-and-specifications/evolution-of-specifications)– Describes how thresholds are periodically updated to track AI progress while keeping suppliers aligned with changing standards.