Script for using MLX-Chat as a UV Project

uv-mlx-chat.sh

# Check if uv is installed
if ! command -v uv >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    echo "Error: uv is not installed or not in PATH"
    echo "Please install uv: https://docs.astral.sh/uv/getting-started/installation/"
    exit 1
fi

PRJ="uv-mlx-chat"
if [[ -d $PRJ ]] ; then
  echo "Project already exists"
  exit 1
fi

uv init $PRJ

if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
    echo "Project $PRJ successfully created."
else
    echo "Project $PRJ creation failed with exit code $?"
    exit 1
fi

cd $PRJ

# Create a Virtual Environment and activate it
uv venv
source .venv/bin/activate

# Install MLX-LM
uv add mlx-lm

# Install HF
uv add hf_transfer
echo "HF_HUB_ENABLE_HF_TRANSFER=1" >> .env

# Create Chat Script
cat << EOF > chat.sh
if [[ -z "\$1" ]] ; then
  MODEL="mlx-community/Qwen3-0.6B-8bit"
  echo "Defaulting to Model \$MODEL"
else
  if [[ \$1 == "--list" ]] ; then
    echo "Here's a list of some nice models:"
    echo "----------------------------------"
    echo "mlx-community/Qwen3-0.6B-8bit (default model, very small and fast)"
    echo "mlx-community/gemma-3-270m-it-8bit"
    echo "mlx-community/gemma-3n-E4B-it-lm-4bit"
    echo "mlx-community/medgemma-4b-it-6bit"
    echo "mlx-community/codegemma-7b-it-8bit"
    echo "mlx-community/Meta-Llama-3-8B-Instruct-4bit"
    echo "mlx-community/Qwen2.5-Coder-14B-Instruct-4bit"
    echo
    echo "Your currently downloaded models are:"
    echo "-------------------------------------"
    ls -1 ~/.cache/huggingface/hub | sed 's/^models--//' | sed 's/--/\//g'
	echo
    echo "For more models please visit https://huggingface.co/mlx-community/collections"
    exit 0
  else
    MODEL=\$1
  fi
fi

source .venv/bin/activate
export HF_HUB_ENABLE_HF_TRANSFER=1

# Start Chat
mlx_lm.chat --model \$MODEL -m 10000
EOF

# Give Permissions to script
chmod 744 chat.sh

echo "To list some nice models:"
echo "cd $PRJ"
echo "./chat.sh --list"
echo
echo "To chat, execute:"
echo "cd $PRJ"
echo "./chat.sh [MODEL]"
echo