Foundry Local CLI Reference

Important

• Foundry Local is available in preview. Public preview releases provide early access to features that are in active deployment.
• Features, approaches, and processes can change or have limited capabilities, before General Availability (GA).

This article provides a comprehensive reference for the Foundry Local command-line interface (CLI). The CLI organizes commands into logical categories to help you manage models, control the service, and maintain your local cache.

Overview

View all available commands with the help option:

foundry --help

The CLI organizes commands into three main categories:

• Model: Commands for managing and running AI models
• Service: Commands for controlling the Foundry Local service
• Cache: Commands for managing your local model storage

Model commands

The following table summarizes the commands related to managing and running models:

Note

You can specify the model argument by its alias or model ID. Using an alias will:

• Select the best model for your available hardware. For example, if you have a Nvidia CUDA GPU available, Foundry Local selects the CUDA model. If you have a supported NPU available, Foundry Local selects the NPU model.
• Allow you to use a shorter name without needing to remember the model ID.

If you want to run a specific model, you can use the model ID. For example, to run the qwen2.5-0.5b on CPU - irrespective of your available hardware - use: foundry model run qwen2.5-0.5b-instruct-generic-cpu.

Command	Description
foundry model --help	Displays all available model-related commands and their usage.
foundry model run <model>	Runs a specified model, downloading it if not cached, and starts an interaction.
foundry model list	Lists all available models for local use.
foundry model info <model>	Displays detailed information about a specific model.
foundry model info <model> --license	Displays the license information for a specific model.
foundry model download <model>	Downloads a model to the local cache without running it.
foundry model load <model>	Loads a model into the service.
foundry model unload <model>	Unloads a model from the service.

Service commands

The following table summarizes the commands related to managing and running the Foundry Local service:

Command	Description
foundry service --help	Displays all available service-related commands and their usage.
foundry service start	Starts the Foundry Local service.
foundry service stop	Stops the Foundry Local service.
foundry service restart	Restarts the Foundry Local service.
foundry service status	Displays the current status of the Foundry Local service.
foundry service ps	Lists all models currently loaded in the Foundry Local service.
foundry service diag	Displays the logs of the Foundry Local service.
foundry service set <options>	Set configuration of the Foundry Local service.

Cache commands

The following table summarizes the commands related to managing the local cache where models are stored:

Command	Description
foundry cache --help	Displays all available cache-related commands and their usage.
foundry cache location	Displays the current cache directory.
foundry cache list	Lists all models stored in the local cache.
foundry cache cd <path>	Changes the cache directory.
foundry cache remove <model>	Deletes a model from the local cache.