I run an automated video pipeline that generates images locally, on my Mac. A 16GB M4. The image model is FLUX, a 12B-parameter thing that keeps ~7GB of weights resident in memory even quantized down to 4bit.
I've frozen this machine before (lesson learned the hard way), so there are safety mechanisms in place. A pre-flight gate: don't even start generating if free memory is below 50%. And a watchdog: if free memory crosses into the danger zone mid-generation, kill the generation process — just that process. Never freeze the machine. That's rule one.
And the safety mechanisms worked. Twice. By killing my generation.
Killed. Zero images
The gate passes (51% free). Then the moment generation starts, free memory slides 51→7%, the watchdog goes "nope," and kills it. Zero images produced.
