Apple Intelligence API for VS Code

[!WARNING] As of Sep 2026, Apple's on-device model performs poorly and has limited practical use.

An unofficial VS Code extension that launches Apple Intelligence on-device models as a localhost-only OpenAI-compatible API HTTP server. Nothing is sent externally.

Requirements

Mac with Apple Silicon
macOS 26 or later

What it can do

Model	API	Purpose
`apple-inline`	`POST /v1/completions`	FIM-style inline completion
`apple-nes`	`POST /v1/chat/completions`	Copilot Completions-style NES

Supports GET /v1/models, GET /health, JSON responses, and SSE. The server listens only on 127.0.0.1:8765.

Important: official GitHub Copilot limitation

To use this server, you need a completion extension that lets you specify an arbitrary endpoint and model name. There is currently no de facto standard covering both completion and NES.

As of September 2026, local models selectable via VS Code BYOK / Custom Endpoint are for Chat and utility tasks. The official GitHub Copilot inline completion and NES backends cannot be replaced with this server. The models shown in GitHub Copilot: Change Completions Model are provided by GitHub.

Using with Copilot Completions

Verified with Copilot Completions v1.2.4.

Add the following to settings.json:

{
  "cc-completion.ghost.baseUrl": "http://127.0.0.1:8765/v1",
  "cc-completion.ghost.model": "apple-inline",
  "cc-completion.ghost.presencePenalty": 0,
  "cc-completion.ghost.frequencyPenalty": 0,
  "cc-completion.nes.baseUrl": "http://127.0.0.1:8765/v1",
  "cc-completion.nes.model": "apple-nes",
  "cc-completion.nes.presencePenalty": 0,
  "cc-completion.nes.frequencyPenalty": 0
}

In the Copilot Completions status menu, enable GHOST and NES and disable NCP. Enabling other inline/NES providers at the same time causes competing suggestions.

Prompt settings

appleIntelligenceApi.inline.instructions / appleIntelligenceApi.nes.instructions: default instruction prompts
appleIntelligenceApi.inline.languageInstructions / appleIntelligenceApi.nes.languageInstructions: per-language-ID instruction prompts
appleIntelligenceApi.inline.promptTemplate / appleIntelligenceApi.nes.promptTemplate: input templates
appleIntelligenceApi.inline.languagePromptTemplates / appleIntelligenceApi.nes.languagePromptTemplates: per-language-ID input templates
appleIntelligenceApi.nes.renameHintTemplate / appleIntelligenceApi.nes.languageRenameHintTemplates: rename hint templates

Placeholders

Inline templates: {before} and {after}, once each
NES templates: {recentEdits}, {beforeTarget}, {afterTarget}, and {target}, once each
Rename hint templates: {old} and {new}, once each
Invalid settings are shown in a notification and the status bar, and completion APIs return invalid_prompt_configuration.

License

MIT. For dependency notices, see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md and dist/licenses inside the distributed VSIX.

Apple Intelligence API

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