lemonade

lemonade-server CLI

The lemonade-server command-line interface (CLI) provides a set of utility commands for managing the server. When you install Lemonade Server using the GUI installer, lemonade-server is added to your PATH so that it can be invoked from any terminal.

lemonade-server provides these utilities:

Option/Command Description
-v, --version Print the lemonade-sdk package version used to install Lemonade Server.
serve Start the server process in the current terminal. See command options below.
status Check if server is running. If it is, print the port number.
stop Stop any running Lemonade Server process.
pull MODEL_NAME Install an LLM named MODEL_NAME. See pull command options for registering custom models.
run MODEL_NAME Start the server (if not already running) and chat with the specified model. Supports the same options as serve.
list List all models.
delete MODEL_NAME Delete a model and its files from local storage.

Examples:

# Start server with custom settings
lemonade-server serve --port 8080 --log-level debug --llamacpp vulkan

# Run a specific model with custom server settings
lemonade-server run llama-3.2-3b-instruct --port 8080 --log-level debug --llamacpp rocm

Command Line Options for serve and run

When using the serve command, you can configure the server with these additional options. The run command supports the same options but also requires a MODEL_NAME parameter:

lemonade-server serve [options]
lemonade-server run MODEL_NAME [options]
Option Description Default
--port [port] Specify the port number to run the server on 8000
--host [host] Specify the host address for where to listen connections localhost
--log-level [level] Set the logging level info
--llamacpp [vulkan\|rocm] Default LlamaCpp backend to use when loading models. Can be overridden per-model via the /api/v1/load endpoint. vulkan
--ctx-size [size] Default context size for models. For llamacpp recipes, this sets the --ctx-size parameter for the llama server. For other recipes, prompts exceeding this size will be truncated. Can be overridden per-model via the /api/v1/load endpoint. 4096
--llamacpp-args [args] Default custom arguments to pass to llama-server. Must not conflict with arguments managed by Lemonade (e.g., -m, --port, --ctx-size, -ngl). Can be overridden per-model via the /api/v1/load endpoint. Example: --llamacpp-args "--flash-attn on --no-mmap" ””
--max-loaded-models [LLMS] [EMBEDDINGS] [RERANKINGS] Maximum number of models to keep loaded simultaneously. Accepts 1-3 values for LLM, embedding, and reranking models respectively. Unspecified values default to 1. Example: --max-loaded-models 3 2 1 loads up to 3 LLMs, 2 embedding models, and 1 reranking model. 1 1 1

These settings can also be provided via environment variables that Lemonade Server recognizes regardless of launch method: LEMONADE_HOST, LEMONADE_PORT, LEMONADE_LOG_LEVEL, LEMONADE_LLAMACPP, LEMONADE_CTX_SIZE, and LEMONADE_LLAMACPP_ARGS.

pull Command Options

The pull command downloads and installs models. For models already in the Lemonade Server registry, only the model name is required. To register and install custom models from Hugging Face, use the registration options below:

lemonade-server pull <model_name> [options]
Option Description Required
--checkpoint CHECKPOINT Hugging Face checkpoint in the format org/model:variant. For GGUF models, the variant (after the colon) is required. Examples: unsloth/Qwen3-8B-GGUF:Q4_0, amd/Qwen3-4B-awq-quant-onnx-hybrid For custom models
--recipe RECIPE Inference recipe to use. Options: llamacpp, flm, oga-cpu, oga-hybrid, oga-npu For custom models
--reasoning Mark the model as a reasoning model (e.g., DeepSeek-R1). Adds the ‘reasoning’ label to model metadata. No
--vision Mark the model as a vision/multimodal model. Adds the ‘vision’ label to model metadata. No
--embedding Mark the model as an embedding model. Adds the ‘embeddings’ label to model metadata. For use with the /api/v1/embeddings endpoint. No
--reranking Mark the model as a reranking model. Adds the ‘reranking’ label to model metadata. For use with the /api/v1/reranking endpoint. No
--mmproj FILENAME Multimodal projector file for GGUF vision models. Example: mmproj-model-f16.gguf For vision models

Notes:

Examples:

# Install a registered model from the Lemonade Server registry
lemonade-server pull Qwen3-0.6B-GGUF

# Register and install a custom GGUF model
lemonade-server pull user.Phi-4-Mini-GGUF \
  --checkpoint unsloth/Phi-4-mini-instruct-GGUF:Q4_K_M \
  --recipe llamacpp

# Register and install a vision model with multimodal projector
lemonade-server pull user.Gemma-3-4b \
  --checkpoint ggml-org/gemma-3-4b-it-GGUF:Q4_K_M \
  --recipe llamacpp \
  --vision \
  --mmproj mmproj-model-f16.gguf

# Register and install an embedding model
lemonade-server pull user.nomic-embed \
  --checkpoint nomic-ai/nomic-embed-text-v1-GGUF:Q4_K_S \
  --recipe llamacpp \
  --embedding

For more information about model formats and recipes, see the API documentation and the server models guide.

Next Steps

The Lemonade Server integration guide provides more information about how these commands can be used to integrate Lemonade Server into an application.

This site is open source. Improve this page.