OpenAI-Compatible Server

OpenAI-Compatible Server

vllm-mlx provides a FastAPI server with full OpenAI API compatibility.

Starting the Server

Simple Mode (Default)

Maximum throughput for single user:

vllm-mlx serve mlx-community/Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct-4bit --port 8000

Continuous Batching Mode

For multiple concurrent users:

vllm-mlx serve mlx-community/Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct-4bit --port 8000 --continuous-batching

With Paged Cache

Memory-efficient caching for production:

vllm-mlx serve mlx-community/Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct-4bit --port 8000 --continuous-batching --use-paged-cache

Server Options

API Endpoints

Chat Completions

POST /v1/chat/completions

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(base_url="http://localhost:8000/v1", api_key="not-needed")

# Non-streaming
response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="default",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}],
    max_tokens=100
)

# Streaming
stream = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="default",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Tell me a story"}],
    stream=True
)
for chunk in stream:
    if chunk.choices[0].delta.content:
        print(chunk.choices[0].delta.content, end="")

Completions

POST /v1/completions

response = client.completions.create(
    model="default",
    prompt="The capital of France is",
    max_tokens=50
)

Models

GET /v1/models

Returns available models.

Embeddings

POST /v1/embeddings

response = client.embeddings.create(
    model="mlx-community/multilingual-e5-small-mlx",
    input="Hello world"
)
print(response.data[0].embedding[:5])  # First 5 dimensions

See Embeddings Guide for details.

Health Check

GET /health

Returns server status.

Anthropic Messages API

POST /v1/messages

Anthropic-compatible endpoint that allows tools like Claude Code and OpenCode to connect directly to vllm-mlx. Internally it translates Anthropic requests to OpenAI format, runs inference through the engine, and converts the response back to Anthropic format.

Capabilities:

• Non-streaming and streaming responses (SSE)
• System messages (plain string or list of content blocks)
• Multi-turn conversations with user and assistant messages
• Tool calling with tool_use / tool_result content blocks
• Token counting for budget tracking
• Multimodal content (images via source blocks)
• Client disconnect detection (returns HTTP 499)
• Automatic special token filtering in streamed output

Non-streaming

from anthropic import Anthropic

client = Anthropic(base_url="http://localhost:8000", api_key="not-needed")

response = client.messages.create(
    model="default",
    max_tokens=256,
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}]
)
print(response.content[0].text)
# Response includes: response.id, response.model, response.stop_reason,
# response.usage.input_tokens, response.usage.output_tokens

Streaming

Streaming follows the Anthropic SSE event protocol. Events are emitted in this order: message_start -> content_block_start -> content_block_delta (repeated) -> content_block_stop -> message_delta -> message_stop

with client.messages.stream(
    model="default",
    max_tokens=256,
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Tell me a story"}]
) as stream:
    for text in stream.text_stream:
        print(text, end="")

System messages

System messages can be a plain string or a list of content blocks:

# Plain string
response = client.messages.create(
    model="default",
    max_tokens=256,
    system="You are a helpful coding assistant.",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Write a hello world in Python"}]
)

# List of content blocks
response = client.messages.create(
    model="default",
    max_tokens=256,
    system=[
        {"type": "text", "text": "You are a helpful assistant."},
        {"type": "text", "text": "Be concise in your answers."},
    ],
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "What is 2+2?"}]
)

Tool calling

Define tools with name, description, and input_schema. The model returns tool_use content blocks when it wants to call a tool. Send results back as tool_result blocks.

# Step 1: Send request with tools
response = client.messages.create(
    model="default",
    max_tokens=1024,
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "What's the weather in Paris?"}],
    tools=[{
        "name": "get_weather",
        "description": "Get weather for a city",
        "input_schema": {
            "type": "object",
            "properties": {"city": {"type": "string"}},
            "required": ["city"]
        }
    }]
)

# Step 2: Check if model wants to use tools
for block in response.content:
    if block.type == "tool_use":
        print(f"Tool: {block.name}, Input: {block.input}, ID: {block.id}")
        # response.stop_reason will be "tool_use"

# Step 3: Send tool result back
response = client.messages.create(
    model="default",
    max_tokens=1024,
    messages=[
        {"role": "user", "content": "What's the weather in Paris?"},
        {"role": "assistant", "content": response.content},
        {"role": "user", "content": [
            {
                "type": "tool_result",
                "tool_use_id": block.id,
                "content": "Sunny, 22C"
            }
        ]}
    ],
    tools=[{
        "name": "get_weather",
        "description": "Get weather for a city",
        "input_schema": {
            "type": "object",
            "properties": {"city": {"type": "string"}},
            "required": ["city"]
        }
    }]
)
print(response.content[0].text)  # "The weather in Paris is sunny, 22C."

Tool choice modes:

Multi-turn conversations

messages = [
    {"role": "user", "content": "My name is Alice."},
    {"role": "assistant", "content": "Nice to meet you, Alice!"},
    {"role": "user", "content": "What's my name?"},
]

response = client.messages.create(
    model="default",
    max_tokens=100,
    messages=messages
)

Token counting

POST /v1/messages/count_tokens

Counts input tokens for an Anthropic request using the model's tokenizer. Useful for budget tracking before sending a request. Counts tokens from system messages, conversation messages, tool_use inputs, tool_result content, and tool definitions (name, description, input_schema).

import requests

resp = requests.post("http://localhost:8000/v1/messages/count_tokens", json={
    "model": "default",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello, how are you?"}],
    "system": "You are helpful.",
    "tools": [{
        "name": "search",
        "description": "Search the web",
        "input_schema": {"type": "object", "properties": {"q": {"type": "string"}}}
    }]
})
print(resp.json())  # {"input_tokens": 42}

curl examples

Non-streaming:

curl http://localhost:8000/v1/messages \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "default",
    "max_tokens": 256,
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}]
  }'

Streaming:

curl http://localhost:8000/v1/messages \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "default",
    "max_tokens": 256,
    "stream": true,
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Tell me a joke"}]
  }'

Token counting:

curl http://localhost:8000/v1/messages/count_tokens \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "default",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}]
  }'
# {"input_tokens": 12}

Request fields

Response format

Non-streaming response:

{
  "id": "msg_abc123...",
  "type": "message",
  "role": "assistant",
  "model": "default",
  "content": [
    {"type": "text", "text": "Hello! How can I help?"}
  ],
  "stop_reason": "end_turn",
  "stop_sequence": null,
  "usage": {
    "input_tokens": 12,
    "output_tokens": 8
  }
}

When tools are called, content includes tool_use blocks and stop_reason is "tool_use":

{
  "content": [
    {"type": "text", "text": "Let me check the weather."},
    {
      "type": "tool_use",
      "id": "call_abc123",
      "name": "get_weather",
      "input": {"city": "Paris"}
    }
  ],
  "stop_reason": "tool_use"
}

Stop reasons:

Using with Claude Code

Point Claude Code directly at your vllm-mlx server:

# Start the server
vllm-mlx serve mlx-community/Qwen3-Coder-Next-235B-A22B-4bit \
  --continuous-batching \
  --enable-auto-tool-choice \
  --tool-call-parser hermes

# In another terminal, configure Claude Code
export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=http://localhost:8000
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=not-needed
claude

Server Status

GET /v1/status

Real-time monitoring endpoint that returns server-wide statistics and per-request details. Useful for debugging performance, tracking cache efficiency, and monitoring Metal GPU memory.

curl -s http://localhost:8000/v1/status | python -m json.tool

Example response:

{
  "status": "running",
  "model": "mlx-community/Qwen3-8B-4bit",
  "uptime_s": 342.5,
  "steps_executed": 1247,
  "num_running": 1,
  "num_waiting": 0,
  "total_requests_processed": 15,
  "total_prompt_tokens": 28450,
  "total_completion_tokens": 3200,
  "metal": {
    "active_memory_gb": 5.2,
    "peak_memory_gb": 8.1,
    "cache_memory_gb": 2.3
  },
  "cache": {
    "type": "memory_aware_cache",
    "entries": 5,
    "hit_rate": 0.87,
    "memory_mb": 2350
  },
  "requests": [
    {
      "request_id": "req_abc123",
      "phase": "generation",
      "tokens_per_second": 45.2,
      "ttft_s": 0.8,
      "progress": 0.35,
      "cache_hit_type": "prefix",
      "cached_tokens": 1200,
      "generated_tokens": 85,
      "max_tokens": 256
    }
  ]
}

Response fields:

Per-request fields in requests:

Tool Calling

Enable OpenAI-compatible tool calling with --enable-auto-tool-choice:

vllm-mlx serve mlx-community/Devstral-Small-2507-4bit \
  --enable-auto-tool-choice \
  --tool-call-parser mistral

Use the --tool-call-parser option to select the parser for your model:

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="default",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "What's the weather in Paris?"}],
    tools=[{
        "type": "function",
        "function": {
            "name": "get_weather",
            "description": "Get weather for a city",
            "parameters": {
                "type": "object",
                "properties": {"city": {"type": "string"}},
                "required": ["city"]
            }
        }
    }]
)

if response.choices[0].message.tool_calls:
    for tc in response.choices[0].message.tool_calls:
        print(f"{tc.function.name}: {tc.function.arguments}")

See Tool Calling Guide for full documentation.

Reasoning Models

For models that show their thinking process (Qwen3, DeepSeek-R1), use --reasoning-parser to separate reasoning from the final answer:

# Qwen3 models
vllm-mlx serve mlx-community/Qwen3-8B-4bit --reasoning-parser qwen3

# DeepSeek-R1 models
vllm-mlx serve mlx-community/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-7B-4bit --reasoning-parser deepseek_r1

The API response includes a reasoning field with the model's thought process:

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="default",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "What is 17 × 23?"}]
)

print(response.choices[0].message.reasoning)  # Step-by-step thinking
print(response.choices[0].message.content)    # Final answer

For streaming, reasoning chunks arrive first, followed by content chunks:

for chunk in stream:
    delta = chunk.choices[0].delta
    if delta.reasoning:
        print(f"[Thinking] {delta.reasoning}")
    if delta.content:
        print(delta.content, end="")

See Reasoning Models Guide for full details.

Structured Output (JSON Mode)

Force the model to return valid JSON using response_format:

JSON Object Mode

Returns any valid JSON:

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="default",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "List 3 colors"}],
    response_format={"type": "json_object"}
)
# Output: {"colors": ["red", "blue", "green"]}

JSON Schema Mode

Returns JSON matching a specific schema:

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="default",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "List 3 colors"}],
    response_format={
        "type": "json_schema",
        "json_schema": {
            "name": "colors",
            "schema": {
                "type": "object",
                "properties": {
                    "colors": {
                        "type": "array",
                        "items": {"type": "string"}
                    }
                },
                "required": ["colors"]
            }
        }
    }
)
# Output validated against schema
data = json.loads(response.choices[0].message.content)
assert "colors" in data

Curl Example

curl http://localhost:8000/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "default",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "List 3 colors"}],
    "response_format": {"type": "json_object"}
  }'

Curl Examples

Chat

curl http://localhost:8000/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "default",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}],
    "max_tokens": 100
  }'

Streaming

curl http://localhost:8000/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "default",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}],
    "stream": true
  }'

Streaming Configuration

Control streaming behavior with --stream-interval:

# Smooth streaming
vllm-mlx serve model --continuous-batching --stream-interval 1

# Batched streaming (better for high-latency networks)
vllm-mlx serve model --continuous-batching --stream-interval 5

Open WebUI Integration

# 1. Start vllm-mlx server
vllm-mlx serve mlx-community/Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct-4bit --port 8000

# 2. Start Open WebUI
docker run -d -p 3000:8080 \
  -e OPENAI_API_BASE_URL=http://host.docker.internal:8000/v1 \
  -e OPENAI_API_KEY=not-needed \
  --name open-webui \
  ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main

# 3. Open http://localhost:3000

Production Deployment

With systemd

Create /etc/systemd/system/vllm-mlx.service:

[Unit]
Description=vLLM-MLX Server
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/vllm-mlx serve mlx-community/Qwen3-0.6B-8bit \
  --continuous-batching --use-paged-cache --port 8000
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo systemctl enable vllm-mlx
sudo systemctl start vllm-mlx

Recommended Settings

For production with 50+ concurrent users:

vllm-mlx serve mlx-community/Qwen3-0.6B-8bit \
  --continuous-batching \
  --use-paged-cache \
  --api-key your-secret-key \
  --rate-limit 60 \
  --timeout 120 \
  --port 8000