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* feat(backend): add tinygrad multimodal backend
Wire tinygrad as a new Python backend covering LLM text generation with
native tool-call extraction, embeddings, Stable Diffusion 1.x image
generation, and Whisper speech-to-text from a single self-contained
container.
Backend (`backend/python/tinygrad/`):
- `backend.py` gRPC servicer with LLM Predict/PredictStream (auto-detects
Llama / Qwen2 / Mistral architecture from `config.json`, supports
safetensors and GGUF), Embedding via mean-pooled last hidden state,
GenerateImage via the vendored SD1.x pipeline, AudioTranscription +
AudioTranscriptionStream via the vendored Whisper inference loop, plus
Tokenize / ModelMetadata / Status / Free.
- Vendored upstream model code under `vendor/` (MIT, headers preserved):
llama.py with an added `qkv_bias` flag for Qwen2-family bias support
and an `embed()` method that returns the last hidden state, plus
clip.py, unet.py, stable_diffusion.py (trimmed to drop the MLPerf
training branch that pulls `mlperf.initializers`), audio_helpers.py
and whisper.py (trimmed to drop the pyaudio listener).
- Pluggable tool-call parsers under `tool_parsers/`: hermes (Qwen2.5 /
Hermes), llama3_json (Llama 3.1+), qwen3_xml (Qwen 3), mistral
(Mistral / Mixtral). Auto-selected from model architecture or `Options`.
- `install.sh` pins Python 3.11.14 (tinygrad >=0.12 needs >=3.11; the
default portable python is 3.10).
- `package.sh` bundles libLLVM.so.1 + libedit/libtinfo/libgomp/libsndfile
into the scratch image. `run.sh` sets `CPU_LLVM=1` and `LLVM_PATH` so
tinygrad's CPU device uses the in-process libLLVM JIT instead of
shelling out to the missing `clang` binary.
- Local unit tests for Health and the four parsers in `test.py`.
Build wiring:
- Root `Makefile`: `.NOTPARALLEL`, `prepare-test-extra`, `test-extra`,
`BACKEND_TINYGRAD = tinygrad|python|.|false|true`,
docker-build-target eval, and `docker-build-backends` aggregator.
- `.github/workflows/backend.yml`: cpu / cuda12 / cuda13 build matrix
entries (mirrors the transformers backend placement).
- `backend/index.yaml`: `&tinygrad` meta + cpu/cuda12/cuda13 image
entries (latest + development).
E2E test wiring:
- `tests/e2e-backends/backend_test.go` gains an `image` capability that
exercises GenerateImage and asserts a non-empty PNG is written to
`dst`. New `BACKEND_TEST_IMAGE_PROMPT` / `BACKEND_TEST_IMAGE_STEPS`
knobs.
- Five new make targets next to `test-extra-backend-vllm`:
- `test-extra-backend-tinygrad` — Qwen2.5-0.5B-Instruct + hermes,
mirrors the vllm target 1:1 (5/9 specs in ~57s).
- `test-extra-backend-tinygrad-embeddings` — same model, embeddings
via LLM hidden state (3/9 in ~10s).
- `test-extra-backend-tinygrad-sd` — stable-diffusion-v1-5 mirror,
health/load/image (3/9 in ~10min, 4 diffusion steps on CPU).
- `test-extra-backend-tinygrad-whisper` — openai/whisper-tiny.en
against jfk.wav from whisper.cpp samples (4/9 in ~49s).
- `test-extra-backend-tinygrad-all` aggregate.
All four targets land green on the first MVP pass: 15 specs total, 0
failures across LLM+tools, embeddings, image generation, and speech
transcription.
* refactor(tinygrad): collapse to a single backend image
tinygrad generates its own GPU kernels (PTX renderer for CUDA, the
autogen ctypes wrappers for HIP / Metal / WebGPU) and never links
against cuDNN, cuBLAS, or any toolkit-version-tied library. The only
runtime dependency that varies across hosts is the driver's libcuda.so.1
/ libamdhip64.so, which are injected into the container at run time by
the nvidia-container / rocm runtimes. So unlike torch- or vLLM-based
backends, there is no reason to ship per-CUDA-version images.
- Drop the cuda12-tinygrad and cuda13-tinygrad build-matrix entries
from .github/workflows/backend.yml. The sole remaining entry is
renamed to -tinygrad (from -cpu-tinygrad) since it is no longer
CPU-only.
- Collapse backend/index.yaml to a single meta + development pair.
The meta anchor carries the latest uri directly; the development
entry points at the master tag.
- run.sh picks the tinygrad device at launch time by probing
/usr/lib/... for libcuda.so.1 / libamdhip64.so. When libcuda is
visible we set CUDA=1 + CUDA_PTX=1 so tinygrad uses its own PTX
renderer (avoids any nvrtc/toolkit dependency); otherwise we fall
back to HIP or CLANG. CPU_LLVM=1 + LLVM_PATH keep the in-process
libLLVM JIT for the CLANG path.
- backend.py's _select_tinygrad_device() is trimmed to a CLANG-only
fallback since production device selection happens in run.sh.
Re-ran test-extra-backend-tinygrad after the change:
Ran 5 of 9 Specs in 56.541 seconds — 5 Passed, 0 Failed
LocalAI is the open-source AI engine. Run any model - LLMs, vision, voice, image, video - on any hardware. No GPU required.
- Drop-in API compatibility — OpenAI, Anthropic, ElevenLabs APIs
- 36+ backends — llama.cpp, vLLM, transformers, whisper, diffusers, MLX...
- Any hardware — NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, Apple Silicon, Vulkan, or CPU-only
- Multi-user ready — API key auth, user quotas, role-based access
- Built-in AI agents — autonomous agents with tool use, RAG, MCP, and skills
- Privacy-first — your data never leaves your infrastructure
Created and maintained by Ettore Di Giacinto.
📖 Documentation | 💬 Discord | 💻 Quickstart | 🖼️ Models | ❓FAQ
Guided tour
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/08cbb692-57da-48f7-963d-2e7b43883c18
Click to see more!
User and auth
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/228fa9ad-81a3-4d43-bfb9-31557e14a36c
Agents
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/6270b331-e21d-4087-a540-6290006b381a
Usage metrics per user
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/cbb03379-23b4-4e3d-bd26-d152f057007f
Fine-tuning and Quantization
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/5ba4ace9-d3df-4795-b7d4-b0b404ea71ee
WebRTC
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/ed88e34c-fed3-4b83-8a67-4716a9feeb7b
Quickstart
macOS
Note: The DMG is not signed by Apple. After installing, run:
sudo xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/LocalAI.app. See #6268 for details.
Containers (Docker, podman, ...)
Already ran LocalAI before? Use
docker start -i local-aito restart an existing container.
CPU only:
docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 localai/localai:latest
NVIDIA GPU:
# CUDA 13
docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 --gpus all localai/localai:latest-gpu-nvidia-cuda-13
# CUDA 12
docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 --gpus all localai/localai:latest-gpu-nvidia-cuda-12
# NVIDIA Jetson ARM64 (CUDA 12, for AGX Orin and similar)
docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 --gpus all localai/localai:latest-nvidia-l4t-arm64
# NVIDIA Jetson ARM64 (CUDA 13, for DGX Spark)
docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 --gpus all localai/localai:latest-nvidia-l4t-arm64-cuda-13
AMD GPU (ROCm):
docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 --device=/dev/kfd --device=/dev/dri --group-add=video localai/localai:latest-gpu-hipblas
Intel GPU (oneAPI):
docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 --device=/dev/dri/card1 --device=/dev/dri/renderD128 localai/localai:latest-gpu-intel
Vulkan GPU:
docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 localai/localai:latest-gpu-vulkan
Loading models
# From the model gallery (see available models with `local-ai models list` or at https://models.localai.io)
local-ai run llama-3.2-1b-instruct:q4_k_m
# From Huggingface
local-ai run huggingface://TheBloke/phi-2-GGUF/phi-2.Q8_0.gguf
# From the Ollama OCI registry
local-ai run ollama://gemma:2b
# From a YAML config
local-ai run https://gist.githubusercontent.com/.../phi-2.yaml
# From a standard OCI registry (e.g., Docker Hub)
local-ai run oci://localai/phi-2:latest
Automatic Backend Detection: LocalAI automatically detects your GPU capabilities and downloads the appropriate backend. For advanced options, see GPU Acceleration.
For more details, see the Getting Started guide.
Latest News
- March 2026: Agent management, New React UI, WebRTC, MLX-distributed via P2P and RDMA, MCP Apps, MCP Client-side
- February 2026: Realtime API for audio-to-audio with tool calling, ACE-Step 1.5 support
- January 2026: LocalAI 3.10.0 — Anthropic API support, Open Responses API, video & image generation (LTX-2), unified GPU backends, tool streaming, Moonshine, Pocket-TTS. Release notes
- December 2025: Dynamic Memory Resource reclaimer, Automatic multi-GPU model fitting (llama.cpp), Vibevoice backend
- November 2025: Import models via URL, Multiple chats and history
- October 2025: Model Context Protocol (MCP) support for agentic capabilities
- September 2025: New Launcher for macOS and Linux, extended backend support for Mac and Nvidia L4T, MLX-Audio, WAN 2.2
- August 2025: MLX, MLX-VLM, Diffusers, llama.cpp now supported on Apple Silicon
- July 2025: All backends migrated outside the main binary — lightweight, modular architecture
For older news and full release notes, see GitHub Releases and the News page.
Features
- Text generation (
llama.cpp,transformers,vllm... and more) - Text to Audio
- Audio to Text
- Image generation
- OpenAI-compatible tools API
- Realtime API (Speech-to-speech)
- Embeddings generation
- Constrained grammars
- Download models from Huggingface
- Vision API
- Object Detection
- Reranker API
- P2P Inferencing
- Distributed Mode — Horizontal scaling with PostgreSQL + NATS
- Model Context Protocol (MCP)
- Built-in Agents — Autonomous AI agents with tool use, RAG, skills, SSE streaming, and Agent Hub
- Backend Gallery — Install/remove backends on the fly via OCI images
- Voice Activity Detection (Silero-VAD)
- Integrated WebUI
Supported Backends & Acceleration
LocalAI supports 36+ backends including llama.cpp, vLLM, transformers, whisper.cpp, diffusers, MLX, MLX-VLM, and many more. Hardware acceleration is available for NVIDIA (CUDA 12/13), AMD (ROCm), Intel (oneAPI/SYCL), Apple Silicon (Metal), Vulkan, and NVIDIA Jetson (L4T). All backends can be installed on-the-fly from the Backend Gallery.
See the full Backend & Model Compatibility Table and GPU Acceleration guide.
Resources
- Documentation
- LLM fine-tuning guide
- Build from source
- Kubernetes installation
- Integrations & community projects
- Installation video walkthrough
- Media & blog posts
- Examples
Autonomous Development Team
LocalAI is helped being maintained by a team of autonomous AI agents led by an AI Scrum Master.
- Live Reports: reports.localai.io
- Project Board: Agent task tracking
- Blog Post: Learn about the experiment
Citation
If you utilize this repository, data in a downstream project, please consider citing it with:
@misc{localai,
author = {Ettore Di Giacinto},
title = {LocalAI: The free, Open source OpenAI alternative},
year = {2023},
publisher = {GitHub},
journal = {GitHub repository},
howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/go-skynet/LocalAI}},
Sponsors
Do you find LocalAI useful?
Support the project by becoming a backer or sponsor. Your logo will show up here with a link to your website.
A huge thank you to our generous sponsors who support this project covering CI expenses, and our Sponsor list:
Individual sponsors
A special thanks to individual sponsors, a full list is on GitHub and buymeacoffee. Special shout out to drikster80 for being generous. Thank you everyone!
Star history
License
LocalAI is a community-driven project created by Ettore Di Giacinto.
MIT - Author Ettore Di Giacinto mudler@localai.io
Acknowledgements
LocalAI couldn't have been built without the help of great software already available from the community. Thank you!
- llama.cpp
- https://github.com/tatsu-lab/stanford_alpaca
- https://github.com/cornelk/llama-go for the initial ideas
- https://github.com/antimatter15/alpaca.cpp
- https://github.com/EdVince/Stable-Diffusion-NCNN
- https://github.com/ggerganov/whisper.cpp
- https://github.com/rhasspy/piper
- exo for the MLX distributed auto-parallel sharding implementation
Contributors
This is a community project, a special thanks to our contributors!