Cactus runtime

Prebuilt runtime binaries for Needle 3, Whistle and Mirage. One engine runs text, speech and vision locally. Model weights live in their own repositories.

Get started

pip install -U cactus-compute

Use import cactus in Python. The package downloads the matching engine and model weights on first use. See the Python API and source code.

To download a native runner with a model, choose a platform from the table below.

cactus download macos-arm64 --model whistle --out ./runtime
./runtime/macos-arm64/cactus --model ./runtime/macos-arm64/whistle.cact --audio clip.wav

Use --model needle3 or --model mirage for the other models. Omit --model to download binaries alone.

Supported platforms

Release 4.0.0 has 17 target folders under releases/4.0.0. Native runners load .cact weights at runtime. Static libraries include cactus.h for C and C++ applications.

Target	Folder	Files
macOS Apple Silicon	macos-arm64	`cactus`, `libcactus.a`, `cactus.h`
Linux x86-64	linux-x86_64	`cactus`, `libcactus.a`, `cactus.h`
Linux ARM64	linux-arm64	`cactus`, `libcactus.a`, `cactus.h`
Linux ARMv7	linux-armv7	`cactus`, `libcactus.a`, `cactus.h`
Linux RISC-V	linux-riscv64	`cactus`, `libcactus.a`, `cactus.h`
Linux MIPS32el	linux-mipsel	`cactus`, `libcactus.a`, `cactus.h`
Windows x64	windows-x86_64	`cactus.exe`, `libcactus.a`, `cactus.h`
Windows ARM64	windows-arm64	`cactus.exe`, `libcactus.a`, `cactus.h`
Android ARM64	android-arm64	`cactus`, `libcactus.a`, `cactus.h`
Android ARMv7	android-armv7	`cactus`, `libcactus.a`, `cactus.h`
Android RISC-V	android-riscv64	`cactus`, `libcactus.a`, `cactus.h`
iOS ARM64	ios-arm64	`libcactus.a`, `cactus.h`
iOS Simulator ARM64	ios-sim-arm64	`libcactus.a`, `cactus.h`
tvOS ARM64	tvos-arm64	`libcactus.a`, `cactus.h`
watchOS ARM64	watchos-arm64	`libcactus.a`, `cactus.h`
Browser and Node.js	wasm	`cactus.js`, `cactus.wasm`, `cactus.h`
WASI Preview 2	wasm-component	`cactus.component.wasm`, `cactus.wit`

The Python runtime wheels cover macOS ARM64 and x86-64, Linux ARM64 and x86-64 with glibc or musl, and Windows ARM64 and x64. These contain the shared library. Install cactus-compute from PyPI to use them through the Python API.

The WASI component exports cactus:runtime/engine@4.0.0. It is also available as the signed OCI artifact ghcr.io/cactus-compute/cactus-runtime-component:4.0.0.

Weights and releases

Release artifacts have SHA-256 checksums in the manifest. For reproducible downloads, use revision 1a028f5a3972b67dd8d8752f882113d475e7ec4c or tag v4.0.0 and paths under releases/4.0.0/.

See the deployment guide for native integration, browser use and offline setup.