Dev.to
6/20/2026

Build a private mental health
Original: Privacy First: Build Your Own Local Mental Health Assistant with Llama 3 and Apple MLX
Short summary
Build a privacy-first mental health assistant using Llama 3 and Apple MLX running entirely on your Mac. The tutorial covers setup with mlx-lm, quantized model loading, CBT prompt engineering, and resource management. This edge AI approach keeps all data local and offline with zero cloud dependencies.
- •Run Llama 3 locally on Apple Silicon using MLX framework for privacy
- •Implement CBT-based mental health assistant with system prompts and sentiment analysis
- •Quantize models to 4bit/8bit to reduce memory footprint while maintaining reasoning
Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.
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