
laya-mlx
Native MLX runtime for Laya typed decision models, 7–14 ms short decisions on M3 Max. No text generation, PyTorch, or cloud API.
The Lens
By Erik Loyd, SaaS CEO and former COO/CFO of an AWS Premier Partner.
Updated Sep 2026
laya-mlx runs Laya decision models natively on Apple Silicon. Laya is an open-weights model from Convai Innovations that answers multiple choice, rating, and yes or no questions with probabilities instead of generated text. It is the open counterpart to TypeSafe AI's closed Jev API. This port drops PyTorch and runs on Apple's MLX, returning a short decision in roughly 7 to 14 milliseconds on an M3 Max by the author's own measurement. Apache 2.0.
Setup is pip install laya-mlx on Python 3.11 or later and macOS 14 or later. Weights download from Hugging Face on first load, and peak memory for a short question stays under 1 GB. No cloud API and no account. It covers inference and conversion only. Training and fine-tuning stay in the upstream Laya project.
Free at every size. Use it for local classification, routing, or guardrail checks on a Mac where a full LLM call is too slow. TheoLeeCJ/SemIf gets a similar interface out of general open models and also has an MLX backend.
The catch: this is an unofficial port from a young pseudonymous account, at version 0.1.0 with five commits. Context tops out at 512 to 1,024 tokens. And an open issue reports that swapping the order of the options flipped the answer 27 to 33 percent of the time on a Chinese benchmark. Test option-order sensitivity before trusting it.
Free vs Self-Hosted vs Paid
fully freeFree: Everything. Apache 2.0 inference runtime and conversion tools. The Laya weights are a separate download from Hugging Face under upstream's Apache 2.0 license.
Self-hosted: The only way it runs: locally on an Apple Silicon Mac with Python 3.11 or later and macOS 14 or later. Under 1 GB of memory for a short question.
Paid: None. No cloud API, no account, no hosted version.
Completely free and open source. Runs locally on an Apple Silicon Mac.
What to do by team size
- Solo
- free
- Small team
- free
- Medium team
- free; test option-order sensitivity on your own data first
- Large team
- free; an unofficial 0.1.0 port, so treat it as an experiment
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License: Apache License 2.0
Use freely. Patent grant included.
Commercial use: ✓ Yes
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