Sizing a Mac mini M4 for Local AI: An Architect's Breakdown by Task

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Every few weeks someone asks me the same question: "Should I buy a Mac mini M4 to run AI locally?" And every time, my answer is the same - that's the wrong question to lead with. The right question is: which task, at what quality, on how much memory? Hardware is the last decision, not the first. I've been chasing the same goal a lot of practitioners have: becoming self-sufficient on local AI so I'm less dependent on cloud LLM subscriptions, without sacrificing output quality. My current Windows machine has no usable GPU, which makes tools like Ollama and LM Studio frustrating at best.

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MCP is finally here: stop building REST boilerplate and start shipping

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

DESIGN.md, CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md: The Agent-Context File Family

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