About and method
SiliconShelf is a prototype of an independent directory for apps that run AI models on Apple devices. It is run by one person in Austria and has no audience data to show yet.
Where the data comes from
- Apple's public iTunes Search and Lookup API, storefronts: AT, US.
- GitHub's public REST API for repositories we know about (curated seeds) or that an App Store listing links to.
Current snapshot (2026-10-16): 412 apps, of which 14 hand-picked seeds and 398 found by keyword search; 17 have a linked public repository; 40 are flagged stale. 1062 raw search results were considered; 651 were dropped by the relevance filter.
How tags work
Tags are detected by keyword matching on listing text (English and German) and then discarded; we do not store or republish store descriptions. A tag means "the listing mentions this", not "we tested this". Typical failure modes: an app supports Shortcuts but never says so, or mentions Siri only to say it is unsupported.
- On-device
- Listing text suggests models run locally on the device.
- Offline
- Listing text mentions working offline / without internet.
- GGUF
- Listing text mentions GGUF model files.
- MLX
- Listing text mentions Apple's MLX framework.
- llama.cpp
- Listing text mentions llama.cpp.
- Apple Foundation Models
- Listing text mentions Apple's Foundation Models framework.
- Shortcuts
- Listing text mentions Shortcuts / App Intents.
- Siri
- Listing text mentions Siri.
- Server client
- Listing mentions Ollama or a similar server; models may run on another machine.
- Open source
- A public GitHub repository is linked to this app (see the repo for the license).
- Open source (claimed)
- The listing says open source, but no repository is matched yet.
Stale, price and ratings
- Stale: the latest version's release date is more than 365 days before the data was fetched. Stable apps can be fine without updates; the flag is a prompt to check.
- Price is the download price in the AT and US storefronts. In-app purchases and subscriptions are not exposed by the API.
- Ratings are counted per storefront, so numbers differ by country and are small for new apps.
Summaries
Each summary is generated from structured fields (developer, platforms, price, dates, detected tags). It is not the developer's text and not a review.
Independence
No listing is paid for today. If sponsored placements are ever offered they will be labelled and will not change tags, stale flags or alternatives. App Store links are plain links, not affiliate links.