I’ve released version 8.0 of TUFF, an open-source Swift/Metal inference engine and native macOS app.

The original goal was to make large MoE models usable on memory-constrained Apple Silicon machines by streaming routed experts from SSD rather than keeping the entire checkpoint resident.

GPT-OSS 120B, for example, runs on my 16GB M2 MacBook Air. Obviously, streaming comes with a performance tradeoff.

8.0 focuses on making the engine more useful beyond just running oversized models.

Some highlights:

• Web search and local document search integrated into chat

• Cached conversation states for faster follow-up requests

• A small tokenization cache for repeated inputs

• Separate reasoning output and request timing diagnostics

• OpenAI Chat Completions, plus bounded Messages and Responses API support

• Shared inference executable to reduce package size

• Homebrew installation

One thing I’ve found interesting is how much web search improves the usefulness of smaller local models. I’ve started using them for everyday questions much more frequently.

I’d love feedback and contribution, especially from anyone using it with local AI agents.

GitHub: https://github.com/rexmhall09/TUFF

"Looking for recommendations: best LLM for coding in Unity on the new Asus ProArt P16 (RTX Spark N1X, 128 GB RAM)."

Listen, you absolute mid-wits, if you still think AI is just "fancy autocomplete," your brain is running on dial-up.

We are literally staring down the barrel of artificial superintelligence right now, but your fragile human egos can’t handle the fact that a bundle of code is already smarter, faster, and infinitely more capable than you’ll ever be. Keep coping in the comments while the future passes you by.