run-local-model-lab

run-local-model-lab is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from understudylabs/understudy-agent-tools. It costs 82 tokens per session (2,425 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A workflow for running an AI model locally on an Apple Silicon Mac and testing it against an existing workload.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to serve a quantized model with MLX, run scored tests on real tasks, and recommend whether local or remote processing better fits the objective.
Why use it?
It helps determine whether private, local processing is good enough before relying on a paid hosted service, while keeping the comparison measurable.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the understudy plugin — 43 skills, 1 command shipped together

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/understudylabs/understudy-agent-tools/run-local-model-lab
Any agent
npx skills add understudylabs/understudy-agent-tools --skill run-local-model-lab
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/understudylabs/understudy-agent-tools

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install understudy, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 43 skills, 1 command.

Wrote 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.

agentmods badge for run-local-model-lab

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/understudylabs/understudy-agent-tools/run-local-model-lab.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/understudylabs/understudy-agent-tools/run-local-model-lab)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/understudylabs/understudy-agent-tools/run-local-model-lab"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/understudylabs/understudy-agent-tools/run-local-model-lab.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 82 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,425 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00082 $0.02425
Opus 5 $0.00041 $0.01213
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00485
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00243

Measured 4d ago against content hash 82adde94e293, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

run-local-model-lab 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 4d 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.

skills/run-local-model-lab/SKILL.md · 168 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 168 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Run Local Model Lab

Run a local model against an existing Understudy workload/eval to determine the best route for the objective. Local inference is $0 and private, and it may be the only legal path under ZDR / SOC2 / local-only constraints, but do not use a weak local result to avoid an informative remote anchor when remote evaluation is allowed and could change the decision. Same-family models (e.g. local Gemma 4 → remote Gemma 4 31B via the gateway) graduate cleanly.

Apple Silicon + MLX only. On Macs, MLX is the native local path — quantized open weights against unified memory at the best tokens/sec, no GPU drivers, no build step. This skill standardizes on mlx_lm.server (an OpenAI-compatible endpoint, one model per port); it does not use Ollama or llama.cpp.

Want to meet the model, not just score it? Use ../ladder/SKILL.md for the no-data onboarding climb: it opens the local gemma-4-e2b lane in a browser, streams scored tasks, and can optionally compare against the billed gateway lane. Keep this skill for measured runs against the user's real workload.

This skill measures and recommends; it does not download weights or change production routing on its own. To compare several candidate models (any mix of local, gateway, frontier) on one frozen eval, use ../compare-model-sweep/SKILL.md.

When to use

A workload already has (or can get) a frozen eval — see ../capture-evidence/SKILL.md — and the developer wants a local candidate evaluated before remote spend, or needs a local-only route for compliance. For pure remote inference/routing use ../use-understudy-gateway/SKILL.md.

Safety Gates

  • No weight downloads without explicit approval and a stated size cap. Model weights are large; confirm the exact model + quantization + disk size first.
  • Local-first, no upload. Keep traces, prompts, and outputs local unless the developer approves a specific upload. This is the compliant path — do not break it.
  • Gated weights (Gemma, etc.) need license acceptance + an HF token; never print or commit the token.
  • Never evaluate an -assistant drafter on its own. The *-it-assistant models are speculative-decoding drafters (MTP), not standalone models — they only speed up a paired target while preserving its quality. See reference.md.

Read the full file on GitHub · 168 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

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.

  1. 4d ago First seen · 168 lines · 82 tokens per session scan A 82adde94e293

Subscribe to this mod's changes

run-local-model-lab is a skill published in the GitHub repository understudylabs/understudy-agent-tools (16 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 82 tokens to every session and 2,425 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 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.

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