Rust bindings for Apple's Foundation Models framework

⚠️ Beta Warning: This crate is currently in beta. Future updates may contain breaking changes to the API.

Overview

Goal: Offer a safe Rust interface to Apple's on-device Foundation Models so Rust applications can request blocking or streaming language model responses without leaving the Rust ecosystem.

Architecture: A Swift bridge (swift/FoundationModelsFFI.swift) is compiled at build time via build.rs, and the Rust LanguageModelSession wraps its callbacks through a zero-copy FFI layer with typed errors for availability, validation, and generation failures.

Platform Support

This crate supports:

• macOS 26+ (Apple Silicon and Intel)
• iOS 26+ (device and simulator)

Both platforms require Apple Intelligence to be enabled.

Quick Start

Here's a simple example to get started:

use fm_bindings::LanguageModelSession;

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    // Create a session
    let session = LanguageModelSession::new()?;

    // Get a response
    let response = session.response("What is Rust?")?;
    println!("{}", response);

    Ok(())
}

For more examples, see the examples directory.

Features

• Blocking responses - Get complete responses with response()
• Streaming responses - Real-time token streaming with stream_response()
• Stream cancellation - Cancel ongoing streams with cancel_stream()
• System instructions - Configure model behavior with custom prompts
• Session persistence - Save and restore conversation context

Usage Examples

Basic Response

let session = LanguageModelSession::new()?;
let response = session.response("Explain Rust ownership")?;
println!("{}", response);

With Instructions

let session = LanguageModelSession::with_instructions(
    "You are a helpful coding assistant."
)?;
let response = session.response("How do I handle errors in Rust?")?;

Streaming Response

use std::io::{self, Write};

let session = LanguageModelSession::new()?;
session.stream_response("Tell me a story", |chunk| {
    print!("{}", chunk);
    io::stdout().flush().unwrap();
})?;

Session Persistence

// Save session
let transcript = session.transcript_json()?;
std::fs::write("session.json", &transcript)?;

// Restore later
let saved = std::fs::read_to_string("session.json")?;
let session = LanguageModelSession::from_transcript_json(&saved)?;

For complete examples, see the examples directory:

• response.rs - Blocking response generation
• stream_response.rs - Streaming responses
• transcript_persistence.rs - Save/restore sessions

Error Handling

The crate uses a custom Error type with these variants:

use fm_bindings::{LanguageModelSession, Error};

match session.response("Hello") {
    Ok(response) => println!("{}", response),
    Err(Error::ModelNotAvailable) => {
        eprintln!("Apple Intelligence is not enabled. Please enable it in System Settings.");
    }
    Err(Error::InvalidInput(msg)) => {
        eprintln!("Invalid input: {}", msg);
    }
    Err(Error::GenerationError(msg)) => {
        eprintln!("Generation failed: {}", msg);
    }
    Err(e) => eprintln!("Error: {}", e),
}

Building

macOS

On macOS, simply run:

cargo build

iOS

To build for iOS, you need to specify the target:

# iOS device (ARM64)
cargo build --target aarch64-apple-ios

# iOS simulator (ARM64, for Apple Silicon Macs)
cargo build --target aarch64-apple-ios-sim

# iOS simulator (x86_64, for Intel Macs)
cargo build --target x86_64-apple-ios

Cross-compilation Notes

• This crate must be built on macOS as it requires the Swift compiler and Apple SDKs
• The build script automatically detects the target platform and configures the appropriate SDK and library type
• macOS builds use dynamic libraries (.dylib)
• iOS builds use static libraries (.a)

License

Licensed under either of:

• Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.

Legal

This project is independent and not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Apple Inc. Apple, macOS, iOS, Apple Intelligence, and Apple silicon are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries and regions. Use of these marks here is for identification only.