Vectors you can actually edit Paths, not pixels.

Paths, not a trace

Most tools call the export a vector. You open it and find a traced bitmap. Thousands of points. Nothing you can move.

Arrow 2 writes the paths instead. Quiver states the principle plainly: vectors should be intentionally crafted through code. The model writes the markup, so the file arrives with named groups, real shapes, and curves a designer would recognise.

What does "editable" actually mean?

Every vector tool says its output is editable. The word does three separate jobs, and knowing which one you were sold is the useful part.

Traced blobs. A rasteriser run backwards. Paths exist, but they describe colour regions instead of objects. Hundreds of nodes, no grouping, lettering flattened to outlines. Technically an SVG. Practically a photograph in a costume.

Optimised paths. Curves pushed around until the render matches the prompt. The result is fragmented, and the research literature on those methods says so itself.

Generated code. The model writes the markup. Only this class returns named groups, real text elements, and a circle that is still a circle. It is what Arrow does.

Node count is not a nerd detail. An auto-traced logo can carry thousands of control points describing a curve a designer would draw with six. Every one of them can drift when somebody nudges the shape.

Where it came from

Arrow is not a wrapper on somebody else's image model. Quiver's CEO is first author of StarVector, the CVPR 2025 paper on writing SVG code directly from images and text. The product is that research line, commercialised by the people who wrote it.

That history predicts what the model is good at. Structure, not surface.

Is Arrow 2 the best vector model?

On the public human-preference leaderboard for SVG, read in September 2026, Arrow 2 Telos ranks first and Arrow 2 second in a field of 54. Current frontier models are in that field.

Read the category filters before quoting the rank. On logos and branding Telos sits sixth, on seventeen prompts, with confidence intervals near 62 points. That is a statistical tie, not a defeat. On icons and interface work, built on sixty-one prompts, Arrow 2 leads. The cheaper base model beats Telos there by 37 points.

So the tier advice has a shape. Telos for harder briefs. The base model for structured, flat, repeatable artwork.

Two disclosures, because both are material. That table is one benchmark on 500 fixed prompts, not a verdict. And the vector models we serve today are not the ones at the top of it: Recraft's two vector entries sit 23rd and 28th overall.

What it is for

Quiver lists five jobs. Illustrations, illustrative diagrams, technical drawings and line work, vectorisation of raster images, and micro animations.

Part of every ad is line art. A logo, an icon set, a badge, a shape that sits over footage. Those need to scale without softening, recolour without a re-render, and stay editable when the brand team asks for one change. A raster model hands you a picture of that artwork. A vector model hands you the artwork.

Vector work has two live doors on the roster. Recraft V4 (vector / SVG) writes true SVG today. Ideogram 4.0 handles marks and layout when the output can stay raster.

We read the launch properly. What Is Quiver Arrow 2? opens the public leaderboard, filters the categories nobody filtered, and does the pricing arithmetic.