Squish

Squeeze the Most Out of Your Models

Local LLM inference for Apple Silicon. Faster end-to-end response on long contexts, less RAM, INT3 support.

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The Numbers (v9.32.0 / bench v5.1.1)

Measured 2026-06-02 on Apple M3 MacBook Pro, 16 GB unified memory. Model: Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct. Quant: INT4 (squish) / Q4_K_M (Ollama). Five-run medians. Raw artifacts in results/benchmarks_v5_1_1/.

Metric	Ollama 0.18.2	Squish (recommended)
E2E response @ 4000-token prompt	69.63 s	12.78 s  (5.4× faster)
E2E response @ 75-token prompt	8.09 s	5.50 s  (1.5× faster)
Peak RAM during inference	~5 GB	3.36 GB
Disk size — INT4	4.36 GB	4.00 GB
Disk size — INT3 (Qwen3)	not supported	3.56 GB
TTFT @ 75-token prompt	131 ms	279 ms  (honest loss)

Squish wins end-to-end response time at every prompt size measured, with the largest win on long contexts (5.4× at 4000 tokens), uses ~33% less RAM, and supports INT3 for compatible model families.

Ollama wins time-to-first-token at every prompt size, and inter-token jitter on long contexts. If first-byte latency matters more than full-response latency, Ollama is the right tool.

Full table, methodology, and ablation: docs/RESULTS.md (v5.1.1 section).

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Why Squish

Squish is for the workload most local-LLM tools aren't tuned for: the same model called many times an hour from the terminal with shifting context — git-commit-message generation, code-review prompts, agent loops, multi-turn chat, document Q&A.

On a 16 GB Mac, that workload collides with the rest of your work. Ollama keeps ~5 GB resident and pays a long prefill cost on each new long prompt. Squish is a persistent daemon: the model loads once when the daemon starts, and a two-cache architecture (block-paged KV cache for shifting prefixes, prompt KV cache for exact repeats) avoids re-prefilling work the daemon has already done.

Designed for one developer on one machine. Not a production multi-tenant API.

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Install

Prerequisite (macOS/Homebrew): Xcode Command Line Tools are required. Install them with xcode-select --install. If Homebrew reports "Command Line Tools are too outdated", update from System Settings -> General -> Software Update, or reinstall CLT.

# Homebrew (recommended on macOS)
brew tap konjoai/squish
brew trust konjoai/squish
brew install squish

# PyPI
pip install squish-ai

# From source
git clone https://github.com/konjoai/squish
cd squish
pip install -e .

Note: The PyPI package is squish-ai. After installing, the Python module and CLI are both named squish:

pip install squish-ai
squish run --version
python -c "import squish; print(squish.__version__)"

Optional Performance Enhancements

4x faster quantization - install the Rust extension:

cd squish_quant_rs && python3 -m maturin build --release && pip install .

Requirements: macOS 13+, Apple Silicon (M1–M5), Python 3.10+.

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Quick Start

# Pull a pre-quantised model from the catalog
squish pull qwen2.5-7b-int4

# Start the daemon with both caches enabled (recommended config)
squish run qwen2.5-7b-int4 \
  --block-kv-cache ~/.cache/squish/blocks \
  --prompt-kv-cache ~/.cache/squish/pkv \
  --port 8080

Use it as an OpenAI-compatible client:

curl http://localhost:8080/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "qwen2.5-7b-int4",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}]
  }'

Or point any OpenAI / Ollama client at it:

export OPENAI_BASE_URL=http://localhost:8080/v1
export OPENAI_API_KEY=squish
# Ollama-compatible /api/* endpoints also work
export OLLAMA_HOST=http://localhost:8080

Install the macOS LaunchAgent so the daemon starts at login:

squish daemon install

The SquishBar menu-bar app (apps/macos/SquishBar/) ships alongside the daemon — model picker, load progress, and a global hotkey for the chat panel. Build it from Xcode or grab the signed .app from the GitHub release page.

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Configuration

Flag	Purpose
--block-kv-cache <DIR>	Block-paged KV cache for shifting-prefix workloads (agents, multi-turn). Persists across daemon restarts via .safetensors blocks.
--prompt-kv-cache <DIR>	Exact-prompt KV cache. Single-digit-millisecond TTFT on verbatim repeats.
--block-kv-size N	Block size in tokens (default 64).
--draft-model <MODEL>	Speculative-decode draft model (opt-in; see v5.2 diagnosis for current status — net-negative on M3 INT4 with the draft models tested, kept off by default).
--draft-depth N	Speculative decode depth K.
--no-spec, --no-cache	Disable flags, intended for benchmark controls.
squish daemon install / uninstall	macOS LaunchAgent integration.

Picking the right cache for your workload:

• Exact-prompt repeats (cached scripts, fixed templates, automated jobs): --prompt-kv-cache alone. ~9 ms TTFT on a cache hit.
• Shifting-prefix workloads (agents, multi-turn conversations): --block-kv-cache alone, or combined config.
• General use without knowing the workload: combined config (both caches enabled). Best end-to-end completion time across prompt sizes.

The combined config currently doesn't inherit PKV's fast-hit TTFT due to a lookup ordering issue documented in results/benchmarks_v5_1_1/DIAGNOSIS.md; reordering is tracked as a v5.2 follow-up.

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Benchmarks

Full table, methodology, ablation, jitter analysis, and raw per-run JSON:

• docs/RESULTS.md — v5.1.1 section is the source of truth
• benchmarks/ollama_vs_squish/RESULTS.md — bench harness output
• results/benchmarks_v5_1_1/DIAGNOSIS.md — combined-cache ordering write-up
• results/benchmarks_v5_1_1/JITTER_ANALYSIS.md — inter-token p95 explanation
• results/benchmarks_v5_2/SPEC_DECODE_DIAGNOSIS.md — why speculative decoding is currently opt-in

Reproduce locally:

python benchmarks/ollama_vs_squish/bench_v5_1.py

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What Squish Doesn't Do

In the spirit of honesty:

• No GPU support outside Apple Silicon. It's MLX-based. CUDA users should use vLLM or llama.cpp.
• No multi-user serving. Designed for one developer, one machine — not a production API.
• No multimodal models. Text only.
• Higher inter-token p95 on long prompts than Ollama. Conscious tradeoff (deferred KV-cache restore off the TTFT critical path); details in JITTER_ANALYSIS.md.
• Slower first-token on short prompts than Ollama. Fundamental MLX prefill kernel cost.
• Model conversion is slow and not user-friendly. Squish needs models in its own format. Conversion takes time and isn't fully automated.

If any of those matter for your workflow, Ollama or LM Studio is the right choice.

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Architecture

Persistent daemon. The model loads once when the daemon starts and stays resident. Per-invocation model-load cost becomes a once-per-login cost.

Two-cache architecture. A block-paged KV cache stores KV state for fixed-size token blocks on disk (.safetensors) and reconstructs partial-match prefixes for shifting-prefix workloads. A prompt KV cache catches exact-prefix repeats with single-digit-millisecond TTFT.

INT3 quantization with a hard-block list. INT3 behaviour is not uniform across model families. Qwen3 holds within ~1pp of FP16; Gemma-3 collapses (~15pp on common benchmarks). Squish enables INT3 only for families where it's safe and hard-blocks the rest. Try to load Gemma-3 at INT3 and the accuracy gate refuses — you can't accidentally ship a config that quietly degrades.

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Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Issues, benchmarks, and PRs welcome. The bench harness lives in benchmarks/ollama_vs_squish/; if you re-run on different hardware, please share the raw JSON output.

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License

BUSL-1.1 — see LICENSE.

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Links

• Article: Local LLM Server That Wins End-to-End on Long Contexts — in progress
• Org: konjoai · konjoai.org
• Related: Kohaku, Vectro, Squash (EU AI Act compliance, extracted from squish in v9.15.0)
• HuggingFace models: huggingface.co/squish-community
• Module reference: MODULES.md