I like the approach of running everything locally. I'm strongly of the opinion that the privacy angle for local models is going to keep getting stronger and more relevant. The amount of articles that come out about accidents happening because of people handing too much context to cloud models the more self reinforcing this will become.
I’ve seen several projects like this that offer a network server with access to these Apple models. The danger is when they expose that, even on a loop port, to every other application on your system, including the browser. Random webpages are now shipping with JavaScript that will post to that port. Same-origin restrictions will stop data flow back to the webpage, but that doesn’t stop them from issuing commands to make changes.
Some such projects use CORS to allow read back as well. I haven’t read Apfel’s code yet, but I’m registering the experiment before performing it.
They offer it as an option but default it to false! This is still a --footgun option but it’s the least unsafe version I’ve seen yet! Well done, Apfel authors.
FWIW this was the status quo (webpage could ping arbitrary ports but not read data, even with CORS protections) - but it is changing.
This is partially in response to https://localmess.github.io/ where Meta and Yandex pixel JS in websites would ping a localhost server run by their Android apps as a workaround to third-party cookie limits.
So things are getting better! But there was a scarily long time where a rogue JS script could try to blindly poke at localhost servers with crafty payloads, hoping to find a common vulnerability and gain RCE or trigger exfiltration of data via other channels. I wouldn't be surprised if this had been used in the wild.
There is a CORS preflight check for POST requests that don't use form-encoding. It would be somewhat surprising if these weren't using JSON (though it wouldn't be that surprising if they were parsing submitted JSON instead of actually checking the MIME-type which would probably be bad anwyay)
Isn't there a CORS preflight check for this? In most cases. I guess you could fashion an OG form to post form fields. But openai is probably a JSON body only.
The default scenario should be secure. If the local site sends permissive CORS headers bets may be off. I would need to check but https->http may be a blocker too even in that case. Unless the attack site is http.
If you’re looking into small models for tiny local tasks, you should try Qwen coder 0,5B. It’s more of an experiment, but it can output decent functions given the right context instructions.
the 2 hard limits of Appel Intelligence Foundation Model and therefor apfel is the 4k token context window and the super hard guardrails (the model prefers to tell you nothing before it tells you something wrong ie ask it to describe a color)
parsing logfiles line by line, sure
parsing a whole logfile, well it must be tiny, logfile hardly ever are
Some such projects use CORS to allow read back as well. I haven’t read Apfel’s code yet, but I’m registering the experiment before performing it.
This is partially in response to https://localmess.github.io/ where Meta and Yandex pixel JS in websites would ping a localhost server run by their Android apps as a workaround to third-party cookie limits.
Chrome 142 launched a permission dialog: https://developer.chrome.com/blog/local-network-access
Edge 140 followed suit: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/control-a-website-...
And Firefox is in progress as well, though I couldn't find a clear announcement about rollout status: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/QCSKWL-firefox-local-...
So things are getting better! But there was a scarily long time where a rogue JS script could try to blindly poke at localhost servers with crafty payloads, hoping to find a common vulnerability and gain RCE or trigger exfiltration of data via other channels. I wouldn't be surprised if this had been used in the wild.
The default scenario should be secure. If the local site sends permissive CORS headers bets may be off. I would need to check but https->http may be a blocker too even in that case. Unless the attack site is http.
trying to run openclaw with it in ultra token saving mode, did totally not work.
great for shell scripts though (my major use case now)
Imagine they baked Qwen 3.5 level stuff into the OS. Wow that’d be cool.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nathangathright_marco-arment-...
parsing logfiles line by line, sure
parsing a whole logfile, well it must be tiny, logfile hardly ever are
> $0 cost
No kidding.
Why not just link the GH Github: https://github.com/Arthur-Ficial/apfel
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47624647