Getting Started

Project Setup

lmstudio is a library published on PyPI that allows you to use lmstudio-python in your own projects. It is open source and developed on GitHub. You can find the source code here.

Installing lmstudio-python

As it is published to PyPI, lmstudio-python may be installed using pip or your preferred project dependency manager (pdm and uv are shown, but other Python project management tools offer similar dependency addition commands).

pip install lmstudio

Customizing the server API host and TCP port

All of the examples in the documentation assume that the server API is running locally on one of the default application ports (Note: in Python SDK versions prior to 1.5.0, the SDK also required that the optional HTTP REST server be enabled).

The network location of the server API can be overridden by passing a "host:port" string when creating the client instance.

import lmstudio as lms
SERVER_API_HOST = "localhost:1234"

# This must be the *first* convenience API interaction (otherwise the SDK
# implicitly creates a client that accesses the default server API host)
lms.configure_default_client(SERVER_API_HOST)

# Note: the dedicated configuration API was added in lmstudio-python 1.3.0
# For compatibility with earlier SDK versions, it is still possible to use
# lms.get_default_client(SERVER_API_HOST) to configure the default client

Checking a specified API server host is running

Required Python SDK version: 1.5.0

While the most common connection pattern is to let the SDK raise an exception if it can't connect to the specified API server host, the SDK also supports running the API check directly without creating an SDK client instance first:

import lmstudio as lms
SERVER_API_HOST = "localhost:1234"

if lms.Client.is_valid_api_host(SERVER_API_HOST):
    print(f"An LM Studio API server instance is available at {SERVER_API_HOST}")
else:
    print("No LM Studio API server instance found at {SERVER_API_HOST}")

Determining the default local API server port

Required Python SDK version: 1.5.0

When no API server host is specified, the SDK queries a number of ports on the local loopback interface for a running API server instance. This scan is repeated for each new client instance created. Rather than letting the SDK perform this scan implicitly, the SDK also supports running the scan explicitly, and passing in the reported API server details when creating clients:

import lmstudio as lms

api_host = lms.Client.find_default_local_api_host()
if api_host is not None:
    print(f"An LM Studio API server instance is available at {api_host}")
  else:
    print("No LM Studio API server instance found on any of the default local ports")