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Cade's Dotfiles

Local agents default to MLX but localhost:8080 is unavailable

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Source: Troubleshooting reference

Symptom: Pi or OpenCode starts with the configured local model but cannot connect to port 8080.

Root cause: Local models are the macOS client defaults, while heavyweight login services are intentionally disabled. A working CLI does not mean its inference backend is loaded.

Confirm: Inspect local-agent status and the client model selection. A managed default uses mlx/qwen3.6-27b; a different configured backend should be started through its own workflow.

Fix: Run local-agent pi or local-agent opencode. The helper verifies the configured model, starts the managed MLX server on demand if the port is free, and leaves login policy unchanged. It uses cached weights only; run bash ~/dotfiles/install/local-llm.sh pull-models explicitly when weights are missing. Logs are in $LOCAL_PLAT/share/mlxserve/on-demand/server.log.

For fresh DF_PROFILE=core bootstraps, local inference is now skipped by default because its packages belong to the full Python manifest. OpenCode’s config still reconciles independently.