MLX Array API compatibility: upstream status, compatibility

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#450 opened on Jul 18, 2026 27 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty: 5/5
Estimated time: Over a week
Newbie friendliness: 28/100

Issue type: Feature
Clarity: Needs clarification
Activity status: Active
Tech stack: python
Domain: api, testing

Research direction

Start with the listed array-api-tests command and its array_api_tests/test_searching_functions.py entry point, then review sub-issues #451, #452 and #462 plus the linked upstream issues. Done means the compatibility scope, known failures, and general blockers are tracked across the relevant upstream projects; this umbrella issue does not define one standalone change.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

MLX Array API compatibility overview

This issue tracks the compatibility of MLX with the Python Array API
standard and coordinates potential changes across:

MLX
array-api-compat
array-api-tests
the Array API specification

Scope

Array API version:
MLX version/commit:
array-api-tests commit:
array-api-compat branch/commit:
Platform: macos

Compatibility tracking:

Constants, Datatypes and Array Attributes #451
Creation Methods #452
Manipulation Methods #462
Statistical functions https://github.com/data-apis/array-api-compat/issues/463
Operators and elementwise functions: https://github.com/data-apis/array-api-compat/issues/465
Indexing functions: https://github.com/data-apis/array-api-compat/issues/466

The desired endgame

Upstream has a CI job which runs array-api-tests with a list of known failures.

The test suite needs to run with ARRAY_API_TESTS_SKIP_DTYPES=float64 environment variable, and --disable-data-dependent-shapes. For example,

ARRAY_API_TESTS_SKIP_DTYPES=float64 ARRAY_API_TESTS_MODULE=mlx.core pytest array_api_tests/test_searching_functions.py -v --disable-data-dependent-shapes --max-examples=1000

Process

Use this issue an umrella issue, open individual issues for groups of tests from the test suite, edit the links into this top post into the list above. (If you cannot edit it, ping @ev-br)

Problems/failures with individual functions, as uncovered by the test suite: discuss in the sub-issues. Keep this one for general blockers.

Known blockers

missing __array_namespace_info__ : would be best to submit a PR upstream
missing .device attribute of the array object : nothing to do about it

Dominant language: Python
Stars: 131
Forks: 49
Avg merge: 2d 8h
Merged PRs (30d): 6

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
Open a pull request that references the issue number.

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