Hello everybody!
I’m encountering an unexpected guardrailViolation error when using Foundation Models on macOS Beta 3 (Tahoe) with an Apple M2 Pro chip. This issue didn’t occur on Beta 1 or Beta 2 using the same codebase.
Reproduction Context
I’m developing an app that leverages Foundation Models for structured generation, paired with a local database tool. After upgrading to macOS Beta 3, I started receiving this error consistently, despite no changes in the generation logic.
To isolate the issue, I opened the official WWDC sample project from the Adding intelligent app features with generative models and the same guardrailViolation error appeared without any modifications.
Simplified Working Example
I attempted to narrow down the issue by starting with a minimal prompt structure. This basic case works fine:
import Foundation
import Playgrounds
import FoundationModels
@Generable
struct GeneableLandmark {
@Guide(description: "Name of the landmark to visit")
var name: String
}
final class LandmarkSuggestionGenerator {
var landmarkSuggestion: GeneableLandmark.PartiallyGenerated?
private var session: LanguageModelSession
init(){
self.session = LanguageModelSession(
instructions: Instructions {
"""
generate a list of landmarks to visit
"""
}
)
}
func createLandmarkSuggestion(location: String) async throws {
let stream = session.streamResponse(
generating: GeneableLandmark.self,
options: GenerationOptions(sampling: .greedy),
includeSchemaInPrompt: false
) {
"""
Generate a list of landmarks to viist in \(location)
"""
}
for try await partialResponse in stream {
landmarkSuggestion = partialResponse
}
}
}
#Playground {
let generator = LandmarkSuggestionGenerator()
Task {
do {
try await generator.createLandmarkSuggestion(location: "New york")
if let suggestion = generator.landmarkSuggestion {
print("Suggested landmark: \(suggestion)")
} else {
print("No suggestion generated.")
}
} catch {
print("Error generating landmark suggestion: \(error)")
}
}
}
But as soon as I use the Sample ItineraryPlanner:
#Playground {
// Example landmark for demonstration
let exampleLandmark = Landmark(
id: 1,
name: "San Francisco",
continent: "North America",
description: "A vibrant city by the bay known for the Golden Gate Bridge.",
shortDescription: "Iconic Californian city.",
latitude: 37.7749,
longitude: -122.4194,
span: 0.2,
placeID: nil
)
let planner = ItineraryPlanner(landmark: exampleLandmark)
Task {
do {
try await planner.suggestItinerary(dayCount: 3)
if let itinerary = planner.itinerary {
print("Suggested itinerary: \(itinerary)")
} else {
print("No itinerary generated.")
}
} catch {
print("Error generating itinerary: \(error)")
}
}
}
The error pops up:
Multiline
Error generating itinerary:
guardrailViolation(FoundationModels.LanguageModelSession. >GenerationError.Context(debug
Description: "May contain sensitive or unsafe content", >underlyingErrors:
[FoundationModels. LanguageModelSession. Gene >rationError.guardrailViolation(FoundationMo dels. >LanguageModelSession.GenerationError.C ontext (debugDescription: >"May contain unsafe content", underlyingErrors: []))]))
Based on my tests:
The error may not be tied to structure complexity (since more nested structures work)
The issue may stem from the tools or prompt content used inside the ItineraryPlanner
The guardrail sensitivity may have increased or changed in Beta 3, affecting models that worked in earlier betas
Thank you in advance for your help. Let me know if more details or reproducible code samples are needed - I’m happy to provide them.
Best,
Sasha Morozov
Foundation Models
RSS for tagDiscuss the Foundation Models framework which provides access to Apple’s on-device large language model that powers Apple Intelligence to help you perform intelligent tasks specific to your app.
Selecting any option will automatically load the page
Post
Replies
Boosts
Views
Activity
Does the Foundation Model provide Objective-C compatible APIs?
Topic:
Machine Learning & AI
SubTopic:
Foundation Models
Hi all,
I’m encountering an issue when trying to run Apple Foundation Models in a blank project targeting iOS 26.
Below are the details:
Xcode: Latest version with iOS 26 SDK
macOS: macOS 26 Tahoe (installed on main disk)
Mac: 16” MacBook Pro with M2 Pro chip
Apple Intelligence: Available and functional on this machine
Problem:
I created a new blank iOS project, set the deployment target to iOS 26, and ran the following minimal code using Foundation Models. However, I get no response at all in the output - not even an error. The app runs, but the model does not produce any output.
#Playground {
let session = LanguageModelSession()
let response = try await session.respond(to: "Tell me a story")
}
Then, I tried to catch an error with this code:
#Playground {
let session = LanguageModelSession()
do {
let response = try await session.respond(to: "Tell me a story")
print(response)
} catch {
print("Failed to get response:", error)
}
print("This line, never gets executed")
}
And got these results:
I’ve done further testing and discovered something important:
I tried running the Code Along sample project, and there the #Playground macro worked without issues. The only significant difference I noticed was the Canvas run destination:
In my original project, I was using iPhone 16 Pro (iOS 26) as the run target in Canvas. Apple Intelligence was enabled on the simulator, but no response was returned when executing the prompt.
In the sample project, the Canvas was running on My Mac.
I attempted to match that setup, but at first, my destination was My Mac (Designed for iPad), which still didn’t work. The macro finally executed properly once I switched to My Mac (AppKit).
So the question is ... it seems that for now, Foundation Models and the #Playground macro only run correctly when the canvas or destination is set to “My Mac (AppKit)”?
Apologies if this is obvious to everyone but me... I'm using the Tahoe AI foundation models. When I get an error, I'm trying to handle it properly.
I see the errors described here: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundationmodels/languagemodelsession/generationerror/context, as well as in the headers. But all I can figure out how to see is error.localizedDescription which doesn't give me much to go on.
For example, an error's description is:
The operation couldn’t be completed. (FoundationModels.LanguageModelSession.GenerationError error 2.
That doesn't give me much to go on. How do I get the actual error number/enum value out of this, short of parsing that text to look for the int at the end?
This one is:
case guardrailViolation(LanguageModelSession.GenerationError.Context)
So I'd like to know how to get from the catch for session.respond to something I can act on. I feel like it's there, but I'm missing it.
Thanks!
Almost everywhere else you see Apple Intelligence, you get to select whether it's on device, private cloud compute, or ChatGPT. Is there a way to do that via code in the Foundation Model? I searched through the docs and couldn't find anything, but maybe I missed it.
Topic:
Machine Learning & AI
SubTopic:
Foundation Models
Hey,
When generating responses with structured output and non-streaming API, it sometimes takes 3s, sometimes 10-20s. I am firing that request subsequently while testing the app.
Is this by design, or any place I can learn more about what contributes to such variation?
Topic:
Machine Learning & AI
SubTopic:
Foundation Models
I have a MacBook Pro M3 Pro with 18GB of RAM and was following the instructions to fine tune the foundational model given here: https://developer.apple.com/apple-intelligence/foundation-models-adapter/
However, while following the code sample in the example Jupyter notebook, my Mac hangs on the second code cell. Specifically:
from examples.generate import generate_content, GenerationConfiguration
from examples.data import Message
output = generate_content(
[[
Message.from_system("A conversation between a user and a helpful assistant. Taking the role as a play writer assistant for a kids' play."),
Message.from_user("Write a script about penguins.")
]],
GenerationConfiguration(temperature=0.0, max_new_tokens=128)
)
output[0].response
After some debugging, I was getting the following error:
RuntimeError: MPS backend out of memory (MPS allocated: 22.64 GB, other allocations: 5.78 MB, max allowed: 22.64 GB). Tried to allocate 52.00 MB on private pool. Use PYTORCH_MPS_HIGH_WATERMARK_RATIO=0.0 to disable upper limit for memory allocations (may cause system failure).
So is my machine not capable enough to adapter train Apple's Foundation Model? And if so, what's the recommended spec and could this be specified somewhere? Thanks!
While runninf Apple Foundation Model in iPhone simulator, I got this error:
IPC error: Underlying connection interrupted
What does this mean? Related to foundation model?
Topic:
Machine Learning & AI
SubTopic:
Foundation Models
Hi everyone,
I’m currently exploring the use of Foundation models on Apple platforms to build a chatbot-style assistant within an app. While the integration part is straightforward using the new FoundationModel APIs, I’m trying to figure out how to control the assistant’s responses more tightly — particularly:
Ensuring the assistant adheres to a specific tone, context, or domain (e.g. hospitality, healthcare, etc.)
Preventing hallucinations or unrelated outputs
Constraining responses based on app-specific rules, structured data, or recent interactions
I’ve experimented with prompt, systemMessage, and few-shot examples to steer outputs, but even with carefully generated prompts, the model occasionally produces incorrect or out-of-scope responses.
Additionally, when using multiple tools, I'm unsure how best to structure the setup so the model can select the correct pathway/tool and respond appropriately. Is there a recommended approach to guiding the model's decision-making when several tools or structured contexts are involved?
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts or being pointed toward related WWDC sessions, Apple docs, or sample projects.
Hi, I just upgraded my macOS with beta 2. After upgrade, the SwiftTranscriptionSampleApp it's stopped working, in Xcode console I read: "The connection to service named com.apple.modelcatalog.catalog was invalidated: failed at lookup with error 159 - Sandbox restriction."
Note: in beta 1 worked fine
Topic:
Machine Learning & AI
SubTopic:
Foundation Models
Is there anywhere we can reference error codes? I'm getting this error: "The operation couldn’t be completed. (FoundationModels.LanguageModelSession.GenerationError error 4.)" and I have no idea of what it means or what to attempt to fix.
Topic:
Machine Learning & AI
SubTopic:
Foundation Models
Tags:
Machine Learning
Create ML
Apple Intelligence
When context window size exceeded, this error is not called (instead another error has shown up) to handle new session.
LanguageModelSession.GenerationError.exceededContextWindowSize
Or am I doing things wrong?
Topic:
Machine Learning & AI
SubTopic:
Foundation Models
Is anything configurable for LanguageModelSession.Guardrails besides the default? I'm prototyping a camping app, and it's constantly slamming into guardrail errors when I use the new foundation model interface. Any subjects relating to fishing, survival, etc. won't generate.
For example the prompt "How can I kill deer ticks using a clothing treatment?" returns a generation error.
The results that I get are great when it works, but so far the local model sessions are extremely unreliable.
Topic:
Machine Learning & AI
SubTopic:
Foundation Models
I've run into an issue with a small Foundation Models test with Generable. I'm getting a strange error message with this Generable. I was able to get simpler ones to work.
Is this because the Generable is recursive with a property of [HTMLDiv]?
The error message is:
FoundationModels/SchemaAugmentor.swift:209: Fatal error: 'try!' expression unexpectedly raised an error: FoundationModels.GenerationSchema.SchemaError.undefinedReferences(schema: Optional("SafeResponse<HTMLDiv>"), references: ["HTMLDiv"], context: FoundationModels.GenerationSchema.SchemaError.Context(debugDescription: "Undefined types: [HTMLDiv]", underlyingErrors: []))
The code is:
import FoundationModels
import Playgrounds
@Generable
struct HTMLDiv {
@Guide(description: "Optional named ID, useful for nicknames")
var id: String? = nil
@Guide(description: "Optional visible HTML text")
var textContent: String? = nil
@Guide(description: "Any child elements", .count(0...10))
var children: [HTMLDiv] = []
static var sample: HTMLDiv {
HTMLDiv(
id: "profileToolbar",
children: [
HTMLDiv(textContent: "Log in"),
HTMLDiv(textContent: "Sign up"),
]
)
}
}
#Playground {
do {
let session = LanguageModelSession {
"Your job is to generate simple HTML markup"
"Here is an example response to the prompt: 'Make a profile toolbar':"
HTMLDiv.sample
}
let response = try await session.respond(
to: "Make a sign up form",
generating: HTMLDiv.self
)
print(response.content)
} catch {
print(error)
}
}
Topic:
Machine Learning & AI
SubTopic:
Foundation Models
I am writing a custom package wrapping Foundation Models which provides a chain-of-thought with intermittent self-evaluation among other things. At first I was designing this package with the command line in mind, but after seeing how well it augments the models and makes them more intelligent I wanted to try and build a SwiftUI wrapper around the package.
When I started I was using synchronous generation rather than streaming, but to give the best user experience (as I've seen in the WWDC sessions) it is necessary to provide constant feedback to the user that something is happening.
I have created a super simplified example of my setup so it's easier to understand.
First, there is the Reasoning conversation item, which can be converted to an XML representation which is then fed back into the model (I've found XML works best for structured input)
public typealias ConversationContext = XMLDocument
extension ConversationContext {
public func toPlainText() -> String {
return xmlString(options: [.nodePrettyPrint])
}
}
/// Represents a reasoning item in a conversation, which includes a title and reasoning content.
/// Reasoning items are used to provide detailed explanations or justifications for certain decisions or responses within a conversation.
@Generable(description: "A reasoning item in a conversation, containing content and a title.")
struct ConversationReasoningItem: ConversationItem {
@Guide(description: "The content of the reasoning item, which is your thinking process or explanation")
public var reasoningContent: String
@Guide(description: "A short summary of the reasoning content, digestible in an interface.")
public var title: String
@Guide(description: "Indicates whether reasoning is complete")
public var done: Bool
}
extension ConversationReasoningItem: ConversationContextProvider {
public func toContext() -> ConversationContext {
// <ReasoningItem title="${title}">
// ${reasoningContent}
// </ReasoningItem>
let root = XMLElement(name: "ReasoningItem")
root.addAttribute(XMLNode.attribute(withName: "title", stringValue: title) as! XMLNode)
root.stringValue = reasoningContent
return ConversationContext(rootElement: root)
}
}
Then there is the generator, which creates a reasoning item from a user query and previously generated items:
struct ReasoningItemGenerator {
var instructions: String {
"""
<omitted for brevity>
"""
}
func generate(from input: (String, [ConversationReasoningItem])) async throws -> sending LanguageModelSession.ResponseStream<ConversationReasoningItem> {
let session = LanguageModelSession(instructions: instructions)
// build the context for the reasoning item out of the user's query and the previous reasoning items
let userQuery = "User's query: \(input.0)"
let reasoningItemsText = input.1.map { $0.toContext().toPlainText() }.joined(separator: "\n")
let context = userQuery + "\n" + reasoningItemsText
let reasoningItemResponse = try await session.streamResponse(
to: context, generating: ConversationReasoningItem.self)
return reasoningItemResponse
}
}
I'm not sure if returning LanguageModelSession.ResponseStream<ConversationReasoningItem> is the right move, I am just trying to imitate what session.streamResponse returns.
Then there is the orchestrator, which I can't figure out. It receives the streamed ConversationReasoningItems from the Generator and is responsible for streaming those to SwiftUI later and also for evaluating each reasoning item after it is complete to see if it needs to be regenerated (to keep the model on-track). I want the users of the orchestrator to receive partially generated reasoning items as they are being generated by the generator. Later, when they finish, if the evaluation passes, the item is kept, but if it fails, the reasoning item should be removed from the stream before a new one is generated. So in-flight reasoning items should be outputted aggresively.
I really am having trouble figuring this out so if someone with more knowledge about asynchronous stuff in Swift, or- even better- someone who has worked on the Foundation Models framework could point me in the right direction, that would be awesome!
I'm testing Foundation Model on my iPad Pro (5th gen) iOS 26. Up until late this morning, I can no longer load the SystemLanguageModel.default. I'm not doing anything interesting, something as basic as this is only going to unavailable, specifically I get unavailable reason: modelNotReady.
let model = SystemLanguageModel.default
...
switch model.availability {
case .available:
print("LM available")
case .unavailable(let reason):
print("unavailable reason: ", String(describing: reason))
}
I also ran the FoundationModelsTripPlanner app, same thing. It was working yesterday, I have not modified that project either.
Why is the Model not ready? How do I fix this? Yes, I tried restarting both my laptop and iPad, no luck.
Topic:
Machine Learning & AI
SubTopic:
Foundation Models
I'm new to Swift and was hoping the Playground would support loading adaptors. When I tried, I got a permissions error - thinking it's because it's not in the project and Playgrounds don't like going outside the project?
A tutorial and some sample code would be helpful.
Also some benchmarks on how long it's expected to take. Selfishly I'm on an M2 Mac Mini.
Topic:
Machine Learning & AI
SubTopic:
Foundation Models
Download the Foundation Models Adaptor Training Toolkit
Hi, after I clicked on the download button, I was redirected to this page https://developer.apple.com and did not download the toolkit.
When I initialize a session with an existing transcript using this initializer:
public convenience init(model: SystemLanguageModel = .default, guardrails: LanguageModelSession.Guardrails = .default, tools: [any Tool] = [], transcript: Transcript)
The tools get ignored. I noticed that when doing that, the model never use the tools. When inspecting the transcript, I can see that the instruction entry does not have any tools available to it.
I tried this for both transcripts that already include an instruction entry and ones that don't - both yielding the same result..
Is this the intended behavior / am I missing something here?
Topic:
Machine Learning & AI
SubTopic:
Foundation Models
Hey everyone
I'm Manish Mehta, field CTO at Centific. I recently read Apple's white paper, The Illusion of Thinking and it got me thinking about the current state of AI reasoning. Who here has read it?
The paper highlights how LLMs often rely on pattern recognition rather than genuine understanding. When faced with complex tasks, their performance can degrade significantly.
I was just thinking that to move beyond this problem, we need to explore approaches that combines Deeper Reasoning Architectures for true cognitive capability with Deep Human Partnership to guide AI toward better judgment and understanding.
The first part means fundamentally rewiring AI to reason. This involves advancing deeper architectures like World Models, which can build internal simulations to understand real-world scenarios , and Neurosymbolic systems, which combines neural networks with symbolic reasoning for deeper self-verification.
Additionally, we need to look at deep human partnership and scalable oversight. An AI cannot learn certain things from data alone, it lacks the real-world judgment an AI will never have. Among other things, deep domain expert human partners are needed to instill this wisdom , validate the AI's entire reasoning process , build its ethical guardrails , and act as skilled adversaries to find hidden flaws before they can cause harm.
What do you all think? Is this focus on a deeper partnership between advanced AI reasoning and deep human judgment the right path forward?
Agree? Disagree?
Thanks
Topic:
Machine Learning & AI
SubTopic:
Foundation Models