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helmstudio

Open-weight video, image and speech models on your own machine, without the afternoon of setup.

helmstudio installs, runs and switches between studios — each one a repository that wraps an open model — and keeps what every studio makes in one gallery, with where it came from.

Read the quickstart The repository

helmstudio is pre-release. The helm CLI, the packages and an unsigned Mac app are published on the releases page; the launcher also runs from a clone.

Three ways in

Run studios

Build from a clone and open the launcher, or take the unsigned Mac app. Everything stays on your machine.

Getting it running

Build a studio

Wrap a model repository in a manifest — your own, or one whose author never wrote one — and run it under helm dev.

The quickstart · the documentation

Work on helmstudio

The design documents are the contract, and a contradiction in them is raised rather than resolved in code.

Contributing · the architecture

What runs where when you use helmstudio A vertical flow. At the top, you, opening the launcher — a Mac app window or a browser page on the loopback address. The launcher talks to the helmstudio daemon, which installs, supervises and stores. The daemon reaches three things: a studio, which is its own repository on its own port and is the only place a model ever runs; a helmstudio directory in your home directory, holding the database, the assets, the browsable library and the models; and the network — GitHub and Hugging Face — only when you ask for something that needs it. Below, separated, the same picture for someone writing a studio: the author runs helm dev, which runs their studio from its own manifest and keeps its data in a .helm directory beside it. running a studio you the launcher a window, or a browser the helmstudio daemon installs · supervises · stores a studio its own repo, its own port the model runs here ~/.helmstudio helm.db, assets, library, models, logs the network GitHub and Hugging Face, only when you ask writing one instead a studio author helm dev ./.helm
Everything here runs on your own Mac. A model only ever runs inside a studio, and the only outbound calls are the ones you ask for.

The afternoon of setup, made concrete

The submodule you did not clone

A manifest names the repository, the commit and whether it has submodules, and install clones all of it at that commit, then runs the build steps the manifest lists.

The Python version mismatch

A studio declares the Python it needs, and helmstudio gives it an environment of its own, made with uv, so two studios never share one.

The 60 GB download with no resume

Weights come from Hugging Face a file at a time, and a download resumes where it stopped. Studios that name the same repository at the same revision share one copy, and a folder you already have can be linked instead.

Two studios that both want port 8720

A port in a manifest is a preference: when something else has it, the process is given a free one. And one studio holds a model in memory at a time, so launching a second says what it would stop, and asks.

The launch studios

What each one needs, read from its manifest.

h3 studio

video + audio

Native Metal video and audio generation from MiniMax-H3, no PyTorch in the loop.

native-kernelmetalmacOSApple Siliconpeak ~21 GB

MIT · its manifest, annotated · its repository

ltx studio

video + audio

MLX video and audio generation against a user-selected LTX checkpoint.

mlxmetalmacOSApple SiliconPython 3.11peak ~21 GB

MIT · its manifest, annotated · its repository

iris studio

image

Native Metal image generation across the FLUX.2 Klein and Z-Image checkpoints.

native-kernelmetalmacOSApple Siliconpeak ~30 GB

MIT · its manifest, annotated · its repository

AuK studio

audio

PyTorch speech generation and editing on mps, with AuK and AuK-Flash checkpoints.

pytorchmpscpumacOSApple SiliconPython 3.12peak ~25 GB

MIT · its manifest, annotated · its repository

What exists today

Add your own studio

Most repositories worth running will never ship a manifest, so writing one for a repository you did not write is a first-class act, not a workaround.

Quickstart Wrap a repository Manifest reference Publishing All the documentation