## Executive Summary (L3) A 16GB Mac Mini is viable for local LLMs via task-specialized small models, not a generalist. Benchmark which model excels where; a sub-$1k future for non-coding tasks (LM Studio plus a Rust bench). ## Key Insight (L2) **@morganlinton:** base M1/M2 Minis run generalist LLMs poorly but shine on specialized tasks; a multi-model toolkit beats one-model-fits-all. Frontier models stay the fallback for expert code. ## Context (L1) Morgan Linton X post (Apr 22, 2026; 13K views). Testing small models on 16GB Minis for practical local AI (non-coding). Open-source Rust benchmark app forthcoming. **Workflow:** LM Studio plus a custom Rust bench; map model strengths (one good at reasoning, another at classification); frontier fallback for code. **Original:** "Soooo many people buying 16GB Mac Minis for local LLMs... handful of models for specific tasks... future is smaller..." *Source: Morgan Linton (@morganlinton), Apr 2026 — https://x.com/morganlinton/status/2046960357449822646*