clserve 0.1.4

CLI tool for serving LLM models on Alps

clserve

CLI tool for serving LLM models on Alps with sglang.

Installation

pip install clserve

Or install from source:

git clone https://github.com/nathanrchn/clserve
cd clserve
pip install -e .

Features

• Predefined model configurations - Serve popular models with optimized settings
• Multi-node distributed serving - Scale across multiple nodes with tensor parallelism
• Load balancing - Built-in router support for distributing requests across workers
• Real-time status monitoring - Track worker loading stages from initialization to ready
• Flexible deployment - Single-node, multi-node, or multiple instances per node
• Model management - Download models from HuggingFace Hub
• Log management - Easy access to job logs for debugging
• User configuration - Persistent configuration for account, partition, and environment defaults

Quick Start

# Configure your account and defaults (optional but recommended)
clserve config

# Download a model (optional - models can be auto-downloaded on first serve)
clserve download deepseek-v3

# Serve a model using predefined config
clserve -m deepseek-v3

# Check status of all clserve jobs (shows worker loading stages)
clserve status

# Get the endpoint URL by model name
clserve url deepseek-v3

# View logs
clserve logs deepseek-v3

# Stop the serving job by model name
clserve stop deepseek-v3

Commands

clserve config

Configure clserve defaults. Configuration is stored in ~/.clserve/config.yaml.

# Show current configuration
clserve config --show

# Set cluster account
clserve config --account myproject

# Set multiple values
clserve config --partition normal --time-limit 08:00:00

# Interactive configuration (prompts for each value)
clserve config

Options:

• --show, -s: Show current configuration
• --account, -a: Set cluster account
• --partition, -p: Set default SLURM partition
• --environment, -e: Set default container environment
• --router-environment: Set router container environment
• --time-limit, -t: Set default time limit (HH:MM:SS)

Configuration file format (~/.clserve/config.yaml):

account: myproject
partition: normal
environment: sglang_gb200
router_environment: sglang_router
time_limit: "04:00:00"

clserve -m <model>

Start serving a model.

# Serve with predefined configuration
clserve -m deepseek-v3
clserve -m llama-405b
clserve -m qwen3-235b

# Serve with multiple workers (router enabled automatically)
clserve -m deepseek-v3 -w 2

# Serve a custom model
clserve -m my-org/my-model --tp-size 4 --nodes-per-worker 1

# Serve a small model with 4 instances per node (router enabled automatically)
clserve -m llama-8b --num-gpus-per-worker 1

Options:

• --model, -m: Model to serve (required)
• --workers, -w: Number of workers (default: 1)
• --nodes-per-worker, -n: Nodes per worker (default: 1)
• --partition, -p: SLURM partition (default: normal)
• --environment, -e: Container environment (default: sglang_gb200)
• --tp-size: Tensor parallel size (default: 1)
• --ep-size: Expert parallel size (default: 1)
• --num-gpus-per-worker: GPUs per worker process (1, 2, or 4)
• --cuda-graph-max-bs: Max batch size for CUDA graphs (default: 256)
• --grammar-backend: Grammar backend (default: llguidance)
• --reasoning-parser: Reasoning parser module (for reasoning models)
• --tool-call-parser: Tool call parser module (for tool calling models)
• --router-policy: Router policy (cache_aware, random, round_robin)
• --router-environment: Router container environment (default: sglang_router)
• --time-limit, -t: Job time limit in HH:MM:SS (default: 04:00:00)

Note: The load balancer router is automatically enabled when there are multiple worker processes (multiple workers or --num-gpus-per-worker < 4).

clserve status

Show status of serving jobs with detailed worker loading information.

# Show all running jobs
clserve status

# Show status for a specific job
clserve status 12345

# Show status for jobs serving a model
clserve status deepseek-v3

Example output:

+---------+----------------+---------+--------+--------------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Job ID  | Name           | State   | Status | Model                                | Endpoint URL               |
+---------+----------------+---------+--------+--------------------------------------+----------------------------+
| 1252956 | clserve_x41v5v | RUNNING | READY  | ServiceNow-AI/Apriel-1.6-15b-Thinker | http://172.28.44.184:30000 |
| 1252955 | clserve_fyawyz | RUNNING | READY  | Qwen/Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507   | http://172.28.35.60:30000  |
+---------+----------------+---------+--------+--------------------------------------+----------------------------+

The status command displays:

• Job state (RUNNING, PENDING, etc.)
• Worker loading stages (INITIALIZING → LOADING WEIGHTS → CAPTURING CUDA GRAPH → READY)
• Model information and endpoint URLs
• Router status (when enabled)

clserve url

Get the endpoint URL for a serving job by model name. If multiple jobs are serving the same model, you'll be prompted to select one.

# Get URL by model name
clserve url deepseek-v3

# Get URL by full model path
clserve url deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.1

clserve stop

Stop serving jobs by model name. If multiple jobs are serving the same model, you'll be prompted to select one.

# Stop by model name (selector if multiple)
clserve stop deepseek-v3

# Stop all jobs for a model
clserve stop deepseek-v3 --all

# Stop all running jobs
clserve stop --all

clserve models

List available predefined model configurations.

clserve models

Example output:

+--------------------+--------------------------------------+----+--------------+
| Alias              | Model Path                           | TP | Nodes/Worker |
+--------------------+--------------------------------------+----+--------------+
| apertus-8b         | swiss-ai/Apertus-8B-Instruct-2509    | 1  | 1            |
| apriel-15b-thinker | ServiceNow-AI/Apriel-1.6-15b-Thinker | 1  | 1            |
| deepseek-r1        | deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1              | 16 | 4            |
| deepseek-v3        | deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.1            | 16 | 4            |
| llama-405b         | meta-llama/Llama-3.1-405B-Instruct   | 16 | 4            |
| llama-70b          | meta-llama/Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct    | 4  | 1            |
| llama-8b           | meta-llama/Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct     | 1  | 1            |
| qwen3-235b         | Qwen/Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507   | 8  | 2            |
| qwen3-8b           | Qwen/Qwen3-8B                        | 1  | 1            |
+--------------------+--------------------------------------+----+--------------+

clserve logs

Get the log file path for a job by model name. If multiple jobs are serving the same model, you'll be prompted to select one. Logs are stored in ~/.clserve/logs/<job_id>/.

clserve logs deepseek-v3
tail -f $(clserve logs deepseek-v3)/log.out

clserve download

Download a model from HuggingFace Hub to the cluster.

# Download using alias
clserve download deepseek-v3

# Download using full model path
clserve download meta-llama/Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct

# Download specific revision
clserve download deepseek-v3 --revision main

Options:

• --revision, -r: Specific model revision/branch to download

clserve request

Request a new model to be added to clserve. This generates a GitHub issue URL with pre-filled information.

# Request a model by HuggingFace path
clserve request meta-llama/Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct

# Request by model name
clserve request mistral-large

The command outputs a URL that opens a pre-filled GitHub issue. If the model is already available, it will let you know.

Predefined Model Configurations

The following models have optimized configurations:

Alias	Model	TP Size	Nodes/Worker	Description
deepseek-v3	deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.1	16	4	DeepSeek V3.1 MoE (FP8)
deepseek-v3-2	deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.2	16	4	DeepSeek V3.2 (4 workers default)
deepseek-r1	deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1	16	4	DeepSeek R1 reasoning model
llama-405b	meta-llama/Llama-3.1-405B-Instruct	16	4	Llama 3.1 405B
llama-70b	meta-llama/Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct	4	1	Llama 3.1 70B
llama-8b	meta-llama/Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct	1	1	Llama 3.1 8B (4x per node)
qwen3-235b	Qwen/Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507	8	2	Qwen3 235B MoE (8 workers default)
qwen3-coder-480b	Qwen/Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B-Instruct	16	4	Qwen3 Coder 480B MoE
qwen3-32b	Qwen/Qwen3-32B	2	1	Qwen3 32B (2x per node)
qwen3-8b	Qwen/Qwen3-8B	1	1	Qwen3 8B (4x per node)
qwen3-embedding-4b	Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-4B	1	1	Qwen3 Embedding 4B (4x per node)
apertus-8b	swiss-ai/Apertus-8B-Instruct-2509	1	1	Apertus 8B (4x per node)
apriel-15b-thinker	ServiceNow-AI/Apriel-1.6-15b-Thinker	1	1	Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker (4x per node)
gpt-oss-120b	openai/gpt-oss-120b	4	1	OpenAI GPT-OSS 120B (4 workers default)
minimax-m2	MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-M2	8	2	MiniMax M2 (4 workers default)
kimi-k2	moonshotai/Kimi-K2-Instruct-0905	16	4	Kimi K2 Instruct (4 workers default)

Examples

Serve DeepSeek V3 with default config

clserve -m deepseek-v3

This will:

• Use 4 nodes with TP=16
• Start the model on the cluster
• Print the job ID and endpoint URL instructions

Serve with multiple workers

clserve -m deepseek-v3 -w 2

This doubles capacity with load balancing (router is enabled automatically).

Serve a small model efficiently

clserve -m llama-8b

Predefined config runs 4 instances per node with a router for high throughput.

Full workflow example

# Start serving
clserve -m deepseek-v3
# Output: Job ID: 12345

# Wait for startup, then get URL
clserve url deepseek-v3
# Output: http://10.0.0.1:30000

# Use the API
curl http://10.0.0.1:30000/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"model": "deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.1", "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}]}'

# When done, stop the job
clserve stop deepseek-v3

Architecture

clserve unifies single-node and multi-node deployments into a single template:

• Single node, full GPU: --nodes-per-worker 1 --num-gpus-per-worker 4
• Multi-node distributed: --nodes-per-worker 4 --tp-size 16
• Multiple instances per node: --num-gpus-per-worker 1

The router is automatically enabled when there are multiple worker processes for load balancing.