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Salvatore Sanfilippo avatar

DwarfStar

Native C inference engine for running a few large open models locally

  • AI models and runtimes
  • AI coding agents
View on GitHub

What it is

DwarfStar is a small, self-contained inference engine written in C that runs a short list of large open-weight models, mainly DeepSeek V4 Flash and PRO plus GLM and Qwen variants, on Metal, CUDA and ROCm. It ships its own GGUF files, an interactive CLI, an HTTP server for multiple sessions, and a built-in coding agent, with SSD streaming, tensor parallelism across RDMA-linked Macs, and multi-GPU support. People with high-memory Macs, DGX Spark, Strix Halo boxes or CUDA card rigs use it to run frontier-class open models on hardware they own.

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Facts

Stars
23,965 GitHub stars.
23,965

Forks
2,317
Commits
827
Contributors
55
Language
C
License
MIT
Last commit
Oct 19, 2026
On GitHub since
May 2026
Platforms
macOS, Linux, CLI, self-hosted
Self-hostable
Yes
Author
Salvatore Sanfilippo
Tags
  • coding-agent
  • llm-inference
  • local-ai
  • model-optimization
  • gpu-computing

Last synced from GitHub on Oct 20, 2026

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What people are saying

Updated Oct 21, 2026
  • Hacker NewsDeepSeek 4 Flash local inference engine for MetalMay 7, 2026 · 499 points · 159 comments (opens Hacker News in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“i’ve finally gotten a taste of near-frontier models on local hardware and, uhhh, wow”Oct 10, 2026 · 18 likes · 2 replies (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“The one inferenfe engine that works really really well on strix halo for me is this one The GLM 5.3 Flash model runs still a tiny bit too slow there for my…”Sep 19, 2026 · 2 likes · 1 reply (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“Yes @antirez.bsky.social is hacking on DeepSeek to run well on MacOS”Aug 29, 2026 · 2 likes · 1 reply (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Hacker NewsCommits · antirez/ds4 glm5.2 branchJul 6, 2026 · 3 points · 0 comments (opens Hacker News in a new tab)
  • Hacker NewsDirectional steering is a runtime activation edit for DS4Sep 20, 2026 · 2 points · 0 comments (opens Hacker News in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“Likely, but I have not tested mlxserve yet, just their model picker. I also do not use Ollama (that seems to have been fallen behind/lost momentum) or LM…”Sep 7, 2026 · 1 like · 1 reply (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“no idea if anyone did this to kimi, but ds4 pro q2 does 138.82 t/s prefill and 9.56 t/s generation at 32768 context on m3 ultra 512gb with”Jun 15, 2026 · 1 like · 1 reply (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“I run on my laptop and it’s comparable to a frontier model from a year ago, and better at coding”Jun 5, 2026 · 2 likes · 0 replies (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“Well this looks interesting.”Oct 8, 2026 · 1 like · 0 replies (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“How to use this project? #practices #vibecoding”Sep 25, 2026 · 1 like · 0 replies (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“This? 3 different vendor-exclusive backends, when a single Vulkan backend would cover all hardware involved and still be able to use matmul acceleration.”Aug 13, 2026 · 1 like · 0 replies (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“DwarfStar reports its few-hundred-billion-parameter DeepSeek V4 Flash q2 at 26.68 tok/s generation on a short prompt, using Metal on a 128 GB M3 Max MacBook…”Aug 5, 2026 · 0 likes · 1 reply (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“DeepSeek 4 models run locally on Metal, CUDA and ROCm. antirez/ds4 inference engine with +385 stars today. #LLM #Ollama #LocalLLM 🔗”Aug 3, 2026 · 1 like · 0 replies (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“A Spark or Strix Halo will realistically allow you to run DeepSeek 4 Flash, with – that's *useful*, but it's tiny compared to frontier models. Kimi K3 is…”Aug 1, 2026 · 0 likes · 1 reply (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“Give a try to this DeepSeek4 Flash fine tuned for 128Gb Apple Silicon”Jun 9, 2026 · 1 like · 0 replies (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“antirez/ds4: DeepSeek 4 Flash and PRO local inference engine for Metal, CUDA and ROCm #devopsish”Jul 16, 2026 · 0 likes · 0 replies (opens Bluesky in a new tab)