AX-Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct-MLX-AXQ-4bit

An AXQuant (AXQ) mixed-precision MLX checkpoint for Apple Silicon, converted directly from the BF16 source model. The language path is quantized while the vision tower are preserved at BF16 in the checkpoint (or a bound sidecar when present).

Development evidence — not a certified AXQuant release. This package has conversion and artifact-integrity records, but it does not publish measured quality, long-context, kernel-speed, or MTP-speed evidence. Do not interpret the AXQ product label as a benchmark claim.

Stable-name v2. main serves the audited v2 artifact for backward compatibility. The same revision is tagged v2; when this repository replaced an earlier artifact, that prior revision remains recoverable at legacy-pre-v2.

Model details

This repository contains MLX Safetensors. It does not contain PyTorch or GGUF weights.

Choosing an AXQ pack

AXQ names describe a storage-budget product class, not one uniform precision applied to every tensor. Protected tensors remain at higher precision, so the exact measured BPW is authoritative. In particular, a 6bit-named mixed plan may retain 4bit as its base precision while selecting 6-bit, 8-bit, or BF16 for other tensors to meet an approximately 6-BPW total budget. Protection floors can also raise a 4bit-named pack close to (or above) a 6bit budget on small or heavily protected models.

See the AutomatosX MLX model catalog for related MLX and OptiQ alternatives.

Download

python -m pip install -U huggingface_hub
hf download AutomatosX/AX-Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct-MLX-AXQ-4bit --local-dir ./AX-Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct-MLX-AXQ-4bit

Allow at least 6.99 GB of free disk space. Pin the resulting Hub commit in reproducible deployments rather than relying indefinitely on main.

Run with MLX-VLM

python -m pip install -U mlx-vlm
python -m mlx_vlm.generate \
  --model AutomatosX/AX-Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct-MLX-AXQ-4bit \
  --image ./image.png \
  --prompt "Describe this image." \
  --max-tokens 128 \
  --temperature 0.0

The protected vision tower and AXQ language decoder are loaded together by MLX-VLM. The artifact records MLX 0.32.0; runtime QA is reported separately from model-quality claims.

AX Engine status

This package does not include a validated native model-manifest.json, so AX Engine execution is not established by this release. The AX Engine fields in axquant_runtime.json describe the intended compatibility contract, not observed runtime evidence. Use the architecture-specific MLX runtime path above. The artifact records AX Engine version not recorded, but version discovery alone is not a runtime check.

Quantization layout

• Quantization methods: affine, bf16.
• Group sizes used by quantized assignments: 32, 64.
• MTP sidecar: not included.
• Vision sidecar: not included.
• Vision weights: protected BF16 in main shards.
• Optimization scope: text-path.
• Support tier: convertible.

BF16 sidecars, when present, are included in total download size. Their presence does not by itself establish MTP acceleration or vision-language quality.

Evidence and validation status

Intended use and limitations

• Intended for local development and evaluation on Apple Silicon with MLX-compatible runtimes.

• No minimum unified-memory figure is claimed; loadability depends on model size, context length, KV-cache policy, runtime buffers, and other processes using unified memory.

• Architecture-prior allocation is not measured sensitivity. It must not be presented as measured model quality.

• Vision weights are preserved at BF16, but this release does not claim validated VLM quality.

• The configured context window can require substantially more memory as the KV cache grows.

• AX Engine execution is not established because this package has no validated native manifest.

• Upstream capabilities, limitations, biases, and responsible-use guidance still apply.

Provenance and audit files

• axquant_manifest.json: package identity, byte accounting, runtime contract, software versions, and file checksums.
• axquant_plan.json: per-tensor precision decisions and planning evidence.
• axquant_quantizer_execution.json: conversion coverage and fallback records.
• axquant_runtime.json: declared AX Engine and MLX compatibility metadata; runtime checks remain separate evidence.

All published provenance uses repository-relative paths. Local source paths are stripped before publication. The checkpoint was converted from BF16 rather than re-quantized from an OptiQ artifact. If an OptiQ repository is published separately, it uses a different quantizer and should not be assumed to have identical BPW or quality.

License

The checkpoint follows the upstream model license where applicable (often Apache License 2.0). See the Qwen/Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct model card for license terms, model limitations, and responsible-use guidance.