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Control Panel

Run a local model on your Mac with a compressed memory footprint, using a point-and-click web app — no Python required.

:::info Runs on your Mac, not in your browser alone This app starts a real local server on your own machine, using your Mac's own chip. There's no hosted version — install VeloxQuant-MLX first, then run the command below. :::


Install

pip install veloxquant-mlx

Start the panel

veloxquant panel

Your browser opens automatically at http://127.0.0.1:7860.

Set it up

  1. Model — paste a model name, e.g. mlx-community/Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct-4bit. (Don't have one yet? Any model from mlx-community on Hugging Face works.)
  2. Compression method — leave it on the default if you're not sure. It's a safe, broadly-compatible choice.
  3. Click Start Server. The status pill goes StartingRunning.
  4. Copy the Base URL shown on the page.

That's it — you now have a local, OpenAI-compatible endpoint running on your Mac.


Chat with it

Paste the Base URL into any tool that supports a custom OpenAI-compatible endpoint — Cursor, a chat UI, or your own script.

With Python:

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(base_url="http://127.0.0.1:8000/v1", api_key="not-needed")

response = client.chat.completions.create(
model="default_model",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Say hi"}],
max_tokens=50,
)
print(response.choices[0].message.content)

Or from the terminal:

curl http://127.0.0.1:8000/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"model":"default_model","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Say hi"}],"max_tokens":50}'

When you're done, click Stop Server in the panel to shut it down and free the port.


What "compression" means here

VeloxQuant shrinks the memory a model's conversation history takes up (its "KV cache"), so you can hold longer conversations or run bigger models on the same Mac.

One honest caveat: the compression ratio shown in the panel today describes how well the data compresses, not how much memory your Mac actually saves while running — that part is still on our roadmap. So don't expect your Mac's memory usage to drop by the ratio shown; think of it as a preview of where we're headed, not a live memory saving yet.


If something goes wrong

What you seeWhat it means
"port already in use"Something else is using that port — try a different one, or stop the other program.
"cannot be served" for a methodThat method isn't supported by the server yet — pick a different one from the list.
"model not found"Double check the model name, or make sure you're online the first time (it needs to download).
"ran out of memory loading the model"The model is too big for your Mac's RAM — try a smaller one.
Status flips to Error while runningThe server crashed. Scroll the log at the bottom of the page to see why.

Prefer the command line?

Everything the panel does, you can also run directly:

veloxquant serve \
--model mlx-community/Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct-4bit \
--host 127.0.0.1 --port 8000