apfel is a macOS command-line tool and local OpenAI-compatible server that exposes the language model built into Apple Silicon Macs through Apple Foundation Models. Mac users and developers use it for on-device prompts, shell pipelines, interactive chat, and applications that support OpenAI-compatible APIs. Catalogue add-ons provide agent workflows that use apfel as a local AI backend.
Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to Arthur-Ficial/apfel. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Arthur-Ficial/apfel/main/CLAUDE.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Arthur-Ficial/apfelWrote this? Show the measurements
A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.
[](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/arthur-ficial/apfel/claude-md)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/arthur-ficial/apfel/claude-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/arthur-ficial/apfel/claude-md/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/arthur-ficial/apfel/claude-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/arthur-ficial/apfel/claude-md.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>What it costs to keep this loaded
Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.07732 | $0.07732 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.03093 | $0.03093 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.01546 | $0.01546 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00773 | $0.00773 |
Grade A, and why
apfel CLAUDE.md scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 1mo ago.
A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.
Nothing flagged
None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 400 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
apfel - Project Instructions
The free AI already on your Mac. This is our claim. Every surface (README, landing page, repo description) must reinforce it.
The Golden Goal
apfel exposes Apple's on-device FoundationModels LLM. Two things are the product. Two things are byproducts.
Core product (this is what apfel IS)
-
UNIX tool (
apfel "prompt",echo "text" | apfel,apfel --stream)- Pipe-friendly, composable, correct exit codes
- Works with
jq,xargs, shell scripts --jsonoutput for machine consumption- Respects
NO_COLOR,--quiet, stdin detection
-
OpenAI API-compatible HTTP server (
apfel --serve)- Drop-in replacement for
openai.OpenAI(base_url="http://localhost:11434/v1") /v1/chat/completions(streaming + non-streaming)/v1/models,/health, tool calling,response_format- Honest 501s for unsupported features (embeddings, legacy completions)
- CORS for browser clients
- Drop-in replacement for
These two modes are what the README.md leads with. Every design decision, test, and release gate is scored against them first.
Byproducts (useful, but not the pitch)
-
Interactive mini TUI chat (
apfel --chat) - a byproduct for quick testing, not a main product.- Ships because the pieces are already there (Session, ContextManager, tool calling)
- Handy for quick testing a prompt or a local MCP server without writing a client
- Should not dominate README real-estate; a short Quick Start entry is enough
- For a GUI chat app, point users to
apfel-chat(separate repo)
-
Swift library (
import ApfelCore, first shipped in1.1.0) - a goal, but a secondary surface.- Pure, FoundationModels-free Swift Package library product
- OpenAI-compatible request/response types, validation, tool-call handling, schema parsing, MCP protocol, error classification, retry logic, context-trimming strategies
- Downstream apps call FoundationModels themselves - apfel just supplies the types and policies
- DocC catalog at
Sources/Core/ApfelCore.docc/, runnable examples atExamples/, stability contract in STABILITY.md - API-breakage guarded in CI via
swift package diagnose-api-breaking-changes - Must NOT be front-and-center in README.md. One single link to docs/swift-library.md further down the page - no install snippet, no
import ApfelCoresample, no types list. All Swift-library README content lives on dedicated docs pages.
What this file has done since we first saw it
Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.
- 1mo ago Changed · +12 lines · +789 tokens per session 5ae1a0d3a019
- 1mo ago Changed 895cd0eee895
- 1mo ago Changed · -133 tokens per session 3f317fb50a11
- 2mo ago First seen · 388 lines · 7,076 tokens per session scan A 012b22fedc37
apfel CLAUDE.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository Arthur-Ficial/apfel (6,579 stars, last pushed 23d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 7,732 tokens to every session, about $0.0309 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.
apfel CLAUDE.md compared with instructions from other repositories
| Mod | Type | Stars | Last push | Licence | Scan | Tokens | Works with |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| apfel CLAUDE.mdArthur-Ficial/apfel | Instructions file | 6.6k | 23d ago | MIT | A | 7,732 | Claude Code |
| vscode buildNext.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode | Instructions file | 195k | yesterday | MIT | A | 9,719 | GitHub Copilot |
| next.js AGENTS.mdvercel/next.js | Instructions file | 143k | today | MIT | A | 7,461 | Codex, OpenCode |
| langchain AGENTS.mdlangchain-ai/langchain | Instructions file | 149k | yesterday | MIT | A | 4,680 | Codex, OpenCode |
| vscode oss-third-party-notices.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode | Instructions file | 195k | yesterday | MIT | A | 5,516 | GitHub Copilot |
| vscode copilot-instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode | Instructions file | 195k | yesterday | MIT | A | 3,093 | GitHub Copilot |
| deepseek-harness AGENTS.mddeepseek-ai/deepseek-harness | Instructions file | 274k | 2d ago | MIT | A | 4,313 | Codex, OpenCode |