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vmlx

vMLX - Home of JANG_Q - Cont Batch, Prefix, Paged, KV Cache Quant, VL - Powers MLX Studio. Image gen/edit, OpenAI/Anth

Description

vMLX - Home of JANG_Q - Cont Batch, Prefix, Paged, KV Cache Quant, VL - Powers MLX Studio. Image gen/edit, OpenAI/Anth

README

vMLX

Local AI Engine for Apple Silicon

Run LLMs, VLMs, and image generation models entirely on your Mac.
OpenAI + Anthropic + Ollama compatible API. No cloud. No API keys. No data leaving your machine.

PyPI License StarsApple Silicon Python Electron Ko-fi

Quickstart โ€ข Models โ€ข Features โ€ข Image Gen โ€ข API โ€ข Desktop App โ€ข JANG โ€ข CLI โ€ข Config โ€ข Contributing โ€ข ํ•œ๊ตญ์–ด


JANG 2-bit destroys MLX 4-bit on MiniMax M2.5:

Quantization MMLU (200q) Size
JANG_2L (2-bit) 74% 89 GB
MLX 4-bit 26.5% 120 GB
MLX 3-bit 24.5% 93 GB
MLX 2-bit 25% 68 GB

Adaptive mixed-precision keeps critical layers at higher precision. Scores at jangq.ai. Models at JANGQ-AI.

Chat interface Agentic coding chat
Chat with any MLX model -- thinking mode, streaming, and syntax highlighting Agentic chat with full coding capabilities -- tool use and structured output

Quickstart

Install from PyPI

Published on PyPI as vmlx -- install and run in one command:

# Recommended: uv (fast, no venv hassle)
brew install uv
uv tool install vmlx
vmlx serve mlx-community/Qwen3-8B-4bit

# Or: pipx (isolates from system Python)
brew install pipx
pipx install vmlx
vmlx serve mlx-community/Qwen3-8B-4bit

# Or: pip in a virtual environment
python3 -m venv ~/.vmlx-env && source ~/.vmlx-env/bin/activate
pip install vmlx
vmlx serve mlx-community/Qwen3-8B-4bit

Note: On macOS 14+, bare pip install fails with "externally-managed-environment". Use uv, pipx, or a venv.

Your local AI server is now running at http://0.0.0.0:8000 with an OpenAI + Anthropic compatible API. Works with any model from mlx-community -- thousands of models ready to go.

Or download the desktop app

Get MLX Studio -- a native macOS app with chat UI, model management, image generation, and developer tools. No terminal required. Just download the DMG and drag to Applications.

Use with OpenAI SDK

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(base_url="http://localhost:8000/v1", api_key="not-needed")
response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="local",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}],
    stream=True,
)
for chunk in response:
    print(chunk.choices[0].delta.content or "", end="", flush=True)

Use with Anthropic SDK

import anthropic

client = anthropic.Anthropic(base_url="http://localhost:8000/v1", api_key="not-needed")
message = client.messages.create(
    model="local",
    max_tokens=1024,
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}],
)
print(message.content[0].text)

Use with curl

curl http://localhost:8000/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "local",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}],
    "stream": true
  }'

Model Support

vMLX runs any MLX model. Point it at a HuggingFace repo or local path and go.

Type Models
Text LLMs Qwen 2/2.5/3/3.5, Llama 3/3.1/3.2/3.3/4, Mistral/Mixtral, Gemma 3, Phi-4, DeepSeek, GLM-4, MiniMax, Nemotron, StepFun, and any mlx-lm model
Vision LLMs Qwen-VL, Qwen3.5-VL, Pixtral, InternVL, LLaVA, Gemma 3n
MoE Models Qwen 3.5 MoE (A3B/A10B), Mixtral, DeepSeek V2/V3, MiniMax M2.5, Llama 4
Hybrid SSM Nemotron-H, Jamba, GatedDeltaNet (Mamba + Attention)
Image Gen Flux Schnell/Dev, Z-Image Turbo (via mflux)
Image Edit Qwen Image Edit (via mflux)
Embeddings Any mlx-lm compatible embedding model
Reranking Cross-encoder reranking models
Audio Kokoro TTS, Whisper STT (via mlx-audio)

Features

Inference Engine

Feature Description
Continuous Batching Handle multiple concurrent requests efficiently
Prefix Cache Reuse KV states for repeated prompts -- makes follow-up messages instant
Paged KV Cache Block-based caching with content-addressable deduplication
KV Cache Quantization Compress cached states to q4/q8 for 2-4x memory savings
Disk Cache (L2) Persist prompt caches to SSD -- survives server restarts
Block Disk Cache Per-block persistent cache paired with paged KV cache
Speculative Decoding Small draft model proposes tokens for 20-90% speedup
Prompt Lookup Decoding No draft model needed โ€” reuses n-gram matches from the prompt/context. Best for structured or repetitive output (code, JSON, schemas). Enable with --enable-pld.
JIT Compilation mx.compile Metal kernel fusion (experimental)
Hybrid SSM Support Mamba/GatedDeltaNet layers handled correctly alongside attention

5-Layer Cache Architecture

Request -> Tokens
    |
L1: Memory-Aware Prefix Cache (or Paged Cache)
    | miss
L2: Disk Cache (or Block Disk Store)
    | miss
Inference -> float16 KV states
    |
KV Quantization -> q4/q8 for storage
    |
Store back into L1 + L2

Tool Calling

Auto-detected parsers for every major model family:

qwen - llama - mistral - hermes - deepseek - glm47 - minimax - nemotron - granite - functionary - xlam - kimi - step3p5

Reasoning / Thinking Mode

Auto-detected reasoning parsers that extract <think> blocks:

qwen3 (Qwen3, QwQ, MiniMax, StepFun) - deepseek_r1 (DeepSeek R1, Gemma 3, GLM, Phi-4) - openai_gptoss (GLM Flash, GPT-OSS)

Audio

Feature Description
Text-to-Speech Kokoro TTS via mlx-audio -- multiple voices, streaming output
Speech-to-Text Whisper STT via mlx-audio -- transcription and translation

Image Generation & Editing

Generate and edit images locally with Flux models via mflux.

pip install vmlx[image]

# Image generation
vmlx serve schnell                    # or dev, z-image-turbo
vmlx serve ~/.mlxstudio/models/image/flux1-schnell-4bit

# Image editing
vmlx serve qwen-image-edit            # instruction-based editing

Generation API

curl http://localhost:8000/v1/images/generations \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "schnell",
    "prompt": "A cat astronaut floating in space with Earth in the background",
    "size": "1024x1024",
    "n": 1
  }'
# Python (OpenAI SDK)
response = client.images.generate(
    model="schnell",
    prompt="A cat astronaut floating in space",
    size="1024x1024",
    n=1,
)

Editing API

# Edit an image with a text prompt (Flux Kontext / Qwen Image Edit)
curl http://localhost:8000/v1/images/edits \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "flux-kontext",
    "prompt": "Change the background to a sunset",
    "image": "<base64-encoded-image>",
    "size": "1024x1024",
    "strength": 0.8
  }'
# Python
import base64
with open("source.png", "rb") as f:
    image_b64 = base64.b64encode(f.read()).decode()

response = requests.post("http://localhost:8000/v1/images/edits", json={
    "model": "flux-kontext",
    "prompt": "Make the sky purple",
    "image": image_b64,
    "size": "1024x1024",
    "strength": 0.8,
})

Supported Image Models

Generation Models:

Model Steps Speed Memory
Flux Schnell 4 Fastest ~6-24 GB
Z-Image Turbo 4 Fast ~6-24 GB
Flux Dev 20 Slow ~6-24 GB

Editing Models:

Model Steps Type Memory
Qwen Image Edit 28 Instruction-based editing ~54 GB

API Reference

API Gateway

The desktop app runs an API Gateway on a single port (default 8080) that routes requests to all loaded models by name. Run multiple models simultaneously and access them all through one URL.

# All models accessible through the gateway
curl http://localhost:8080/v1/chat/completions \
  -d '{"model": "Qwen3.5-122B", "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hi"}]}'

# Works with Ollama CLI too
OLLAMA_HOST=http://localhost:8080 ollama run Qwen3.5-122B

The gateway supports OpenAI, Anthropic, and Ollama wire formats. Configure the port in the API tab.

Endpoints

OpenAI / Anthropic

Method Path Description
POST /v1/chat/completions OpenAI Chat Completions API (streaming + non-streaming)
POST /v1/messages Anthropic Messages API
POST /v1/responses OpenAI Responses API
POST /v1/completions Text completions
POST /v1/images/generations Image generation
POST /v1/images/edits Image editing (Qwen Image Edit)
POST /v1/embeddings Text embeddings
POST /v1/rerank Document reranking
POST /v1/audio/transcriptions Speech-to-text (Whisper)
POST /v1/audio/speech Text-to-speech (Kokoro)
GET /v1/models List loaded models
GET /v1/cache/stats Cache statistics
GET /health Server health check

Ollama

Method Path Description
POST /api/chat Chat completion (NDJSON streaming)
POST /api/generate Text generation (NDJSON streaming)
GET /api/tags List loaded models
POST /api/show Model details
POST /api/embeddings Generate embeddings

curl Examples

Chat completion (streaming)

curl http://localhost:8000/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "local",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Explain quantum computing in 3 sentences."}],
    "stream": true,
    "temperature": 0.7
  }'

Chat completion with thinking mode

curl http://localhost:8000/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "local",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Solve: what is 23 * 47?"}],
    "enable_thinking": true,
    "stream": true
  }'

Tool calling

curl http://localhost:8000/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "local",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "What is the weather in Tokyo?"}],
    "tools": [{
      "type": "function",
      "function": {
        "name": "get_weather",
        "description": "Get current weather for a location",
        "parameters": {
          "type": "object",
          "properties": {
            "location": {"type": "string", "description": "City name"}
          },
          "required": ["location"]
        }
      }
    }]
  }'

Anthropic Messages API

curl http://localhost:8000/v1/messages \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "x-api-key: not-needed" \
  -H "anthropic-version: 2023-06-01" \
  -d '{
    "model": "local",
    "max_tokens": 1024,
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}]
  }'

Embeddings

curl http://localhost:8000/v1/embeddings \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "local",
    "input": "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
  }'

Text-to-speech

curl http://localhost:8000/v1/audio/speech \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "kokoro",
    "input": "Hello, welcome to vMLX!",
    "voice": "af_heart"
  }' --output speech.wav

Speech-to-text

curl http://localhost:8000/v1/audio/transcriptions \
  -F file=@audio.wav \
  -F model=whisper

Image generation

curl http://localhost:8000/v1/images/generations \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "schnell",
    "prompt": "A mountain landscape at sunset",
    "size": "1024x1024"
  }'

Reranking

curl http://localhost:8000/v1/rerank \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "local",
    "query": "What is machine learning?",
    "documents": [
      "ML is a subset of AI",
      "The weather is sunny today",
      "Neural networks learn from data"
    ]
  }'

Cache stats

curl http://localhost:8000/v1/cache/stats

Health check

curl http://localhost:8000/health

Desktop App

vMLX includes a native macOS desktop app (MLX Studio) with 5 modes:

Mode Description
Chat Conversation interface with chat history, thinking mode, tool calling, agentic coding
Server Manage model sessions -- start, stop, configure, monitor
Image Text-to-image generation and image editing with Flux, Kontext, Qwen, and Fill models
Tools Model converter, GGUF-to-MLX, inspector, diagnostics
API Live endpoint reference with copy-pasteable code snippets
Image generation and editing Developer tools
Image generation and editing with Flux models Developer tools -- model conversion and diagnostics
Anthropic API endpoint GGUF to MLX conversion
Anthropic Messages API endpoint -- full compatibility GGUF to MLX conversion -- bring your own models

Download

Get the latest DMG from MLX Studio Releases, or build from source:

git clone https://github.com/jjang-ai/vmlx.git
cd vmlx/panel
npm install && npm run build
npx electron-builder --mac dmg

Menu Bar

vMLX lives in your menu bar showing all running models, GPU memory usage, and quick controls.

Menu Bar


Advanced Quantization

vMLX supports standard MLX quantization (4-bit, 8-bit uniform) out of the box. For users who want to push further, JANG adaptive mixed-precision assigns different bit widths to different layer types -- attention gets more bits, MLP layers get fewer -- achieving better quality at the same model size.

JANG Profiles

Profile Attention Embeddings MLP Avg Bits Use Case
JANG_2M 8-bit 4-bit 2-bit ~2.5 Balanced compression
JANG_2L 8-bit 6-bit 2-bit ~2.7 Quality 2-bit
JANG_3M 8-bit 3-bit 3-bit ~3.2 Recommended
JANG_4M 8-bit 4-bit 4-bit ~4.2 Standard quality
JANG_6M 8-bit 6-bit 6-bit ~6.2 Near lossless

Convert

pip install vmlx[jang]

# Standard MLX quantization
vmlx convert my-model --bits 4

# JANG adaptive quantization
vmlx convert my-model --jang-profile JANG_3M

# Activation-aware calibration (better at 2-3 bit)
vmlx convert my-model --jang-profile JANG_2L --calibration-method activations

# Serve the converted model
vmlx serve ./my-model-JANG_3M --continuous-batching --use-paged-cache

Pre-quantized JANG models are available at JANGQ-AI on HuggingFace.


CLI Commands

vmlx serve <model>              # Start inference server
vmlx convert <model> --bits 4   # MLX uniform quantization
vmlx convert <model> -j JANG_3M # JANG adaptive quantization
vmlx info <model>               # Model metadata and config
vmlx doctor <model>             # Run diagnostics
vmlx bench <model>              # Performance benchmarks

Configuration

Server Options

vmlx serve <model> \
  --host 0.0.0.0 \              # Bind address (default: 0.0.0.0)
  --port 8000 \                 # Port (default: 8000)
  --api-key sk-your-key \       # Optional API key authentication
  --continuous-batching \       # Enable concurrent request handling
  --enable-prefix-cache \       # Reuse KV states for repeated prompts
  --use-paged-cache \           # Block-based KV cache with dedup
  --kv-cache-quantization q8 \  # Quantize cache: q4 or q8
  --enable-disk-cache \         # Persist cache to SSD
  --enable-jit \                # JIT Metal kernel compilation
  --tool-call-parser auto \     # Auto-detect tool call format
  --reasoning-parser auto \     # Auto-detect thinking format
  --log-level INFO \            # Logging: DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR
  --max-model-len 8192 \        # Max context length
  --speculative-model <model> \ # Draft model for speculative decoding
  --enable-pld \                # Prompt Lookup Decoding โ€” no draft model, best for code/JSON/schemas
  --cors-origins "*"            # CORS allowed origins

Quantization Options

vmlx convert <model> \
  --bits 4 \                    # Uniform quantization bits: 2, 3, 4, 6, 8
  --group-size 64 \             # Quantization group size (default: 64)
  --output ./output-dir \       # Output directory
  --jang-profile JANG_3M \      # JANG mixed-precision profile
  --calibration-method activations  # Activation-aware calibration

Image Generation & Editing Options

pip install vmlx[image]

# Generation models
vmlx serve schnell \            # or dev, z-image-turbo
  --image-quantize 4 \          # Quantization: 4, 8 (omit for full precision)
  --port 8001

# Editing models
vmlx serve qwen-image-edit \    # Instruction-based editing (full precision only)
  --port 8001

# Local model directory
vmlx serve ~/.mlxstudio/models/image/FLUX.1-schnell-mflux-4bit

Audio Options

TTS and STT require the mlx-audio package:

pip install mlx-audio

# TTS: serve Kokoro model
vmlx serve kokoro --port 8002

# STT: serve Whisper model
vmlx serve whisper --port 8003

Optional Dependencies

pip install vmlx              # Core: text LLMs, VLMs, embeddings, reranking
pip install vmlx[image]       # + Image generation (mflux)
pip install vmlx[jang]        # + JANG quantization tools
pip install vmlx[dev]         # + Development/testing tools
pip install vmlx[image,jang]  # Multiple extras

Architecture

+--------------------------------------------+
|          Desktop App (Electron)             |
|   Chat | Server | Image | Tools | API      |
+--------------------------------------------+
|          Session Manager (TypeScript)       |
|   Process spawn | Health monitor | Tray     |
+--------------------------------------------+
|         vMLX Engine (Python / FastAPI)       |
|  +--------+  +---------+  +-----------+    |
|  |Simple  |  | Batched |  | ImageGen  |    |
|  |Engine  |  | Engine  |  | Engine    |    |
|  +---+----+  +----+----+  +-----+-----+    |
|      |            |              |          |
|  +---+------------+--+    +-----+-----+    |
|  | mlx-lm / mlx-vlm  |    |  mflux    |    |
|  +--------+-----------+    +-----------+    |
|           |                                 |
|  +--------+----------------------------+    |
|  |       MLX Metal GPU Backend          |    |
|  | quantized_matmul | KV cache | SDPA   |    |
|  +--------------------------------------+    |
+--------------------------------------------+
|  L1: Prefix Cache (Memory-Aware / Paged)    |
|  L2: Disk Cache (Persistent / Block Store)  |
|  KV Quant: q4/q8 at storage boundary       |
+--------------------------------------------+

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Here is how to set up a development environment:

git clone https://github.com/jjang-ai/vmlx.git
cd vmlx

# Python engine
python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev,jang,image]"
pytest tests/ -k "not Async"    # 2000+ tests

# Electron desktop app
cd panel && npm install
npm run dev                      # Development mode with hot reload
npx vitest run                   # 1545+ tests

Project Structure

vmlx/
  vmlx_engine/          # Python inference engine (FastAPI server)
  panel/                # Electron desktop app (React + TypeScript)
    src/main/           # Electron main process
    src/renderer/       # React frontend
    src/preload/        # IPC bridge
  tests/                # Python test suite
  assets/               # Screenshots and logos

Guidelines

  • Run the full test suite before submitting PRs
  • Follow existing code style and patterns
  • Include tests for new features
  • Update documentation for user-facing changes

License

Apache License 2.0 -- see LICENSE.


Built by Jinho Jang (eric@jangq.ai)
JANGQ AI โ€ข PyPI โ€ข GitHub โ€ข Downloads


ํ•œ๊ตญ์–ด (Korean)

vMLX โ€” Apple Silicon์„ ์œ„ํ•œ ๋กœ์ปฌ AI ์—”์ง„

Mac์—์„œ LLM, VLM, ์ด๋ฏธ์ง€ ์ƒ์„ฑ ๋ฐ ํŽธ์ง‘ ๋ชจ๋ธ์„ ์™„์ „ํžˆ ๋กœ์ปฌ๋กœ ์‹คํ–‰ํ•˜์„ธ์š”. OpenAI + Anthropic ํ˜ธํ™˜ API. ํด๋ผ์šฐ๋“œ ์—†์Œ. API ํ‚ค ๋ถˆํ•„์š”. ๋ฐ์ดํ„ฐ๊ฐ€ ๊ธฐ๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ๋– ๋‚˜์ง€ ์•Š์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค.

๋น ๋ฅธ ์‹œ์ž‘

Release History

VersionChangesUrgencyDate
v1.3.34Post-v1.3.33 fixes driven by user reports and a dedicated-machine test matrix across 5 models. ## SSM Deferred Re-derive (Hybrid SSM + Thinking Models) For thinking models on hybrid SSM architectures (Nemotron, Qwen3.5-VL), the post-generation SSM state was contaminated by thinking tokens and previously **skipped entirely** โ€” causing 100% SSM companion cache miss on every multi-turn request. Now the scheduler **queues a deferred re-derive** that runs during idle time: a separate prefill pass High4/9/2026
v1.3.32Gemma 4 VLM image recognition fix (two-layer bug). **Bug 1** โ€” mlx_vlm MODEL_CONFIG missing `gemma4` entry โ†’ `apply_chat_template()` raised `Unsupported model: gemma4` โ†’ silent fallback to text-only tokenizer โ†’ image content parts dropped โ†’ model answered as if no image was attached. **Fix**: Register `gemma4`/`gemma4_text` under `LIST_WITH_IMAGE_TYPE` in `vmlx_engine/__init__.py` at import time so the Jinja chat template renders `<|image|>` tokens correctly. **Bug 2** โ€” Gemma 4 vision tower High4/9/2026

Dependencies & License Audit

Loading dependencies...

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