Apple Foundation Models MCP Server
Expose Apple's on-device 3B parameter LLM to Claude Code and Claude Desktop via MCP. Zero API cost, fully private, runs on Neural Engine.
Requirements
- macOS 26+ (Tahoe or later)
- Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4)
- Apple Intelligence enabled in System Settings
- Python 3.10+
Install
pip install apple-fm-mcp
Configure
Add to your Claude Code config (~/.claude/mcp.json):
{
"mcpServers": {
"apple-fm": {
"command": "apple-fm-mcp"
}
}
}
Or Claude Desktop (~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json):
{
"mcpServers": {
"apple-fm": {
"command": "apple-fm-mcp"
}
}
}
Tools
| Tool | Description | Latency |
|---|---|---|
fm_generate | Free-form text generation | ~1s |
fm_summarize | Summarize text into bullet points | ~4s |
fm_classify | Classify text into categories | ~2s |
fm_extract | Extract structured data from text | ~3s |
fm_status | Check model availability | instant |
Why Use This?
- Free: No API keys, no tokens, no cloud costs
- Private: All inference on-device, no data leaves your Mac
- Fast: Neural Engine optimized, ~1s for generation
- Complementary: Use alongside Claude for tasks where on-device speed matters
When to Use Apple FM vs Claude
| Task | Use Apple FM | Use Claude |
|---|---|---|
| Quick classification | Yes | Overkill |
| Text summarization | Yes (short text) | Yes (long documents) |
| Code generation | No | Yes |
| Complex reasoning | No | Yes |
| Data extraction | Yes (simple) | Yes (complex) |
| Privacy-critical | Yes | Depends |
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License
MIT