---
sidebar_position: 70
title: Podman AI Lab
description: Podman AI Lab is an open source extension for Podman Desktop to work with LLMs.
keywords: [podman desktop, podman, containers, ai, llm, generative ai]
tags: [ai, llm, generative ai]
---

# Run LLMs locally

Podman AI Lab is the easiest way to work with Large Language Models (LLMs) on your local developer workstation. Find a catalog of recipes, leverage a curated list of open source models, experiment and compare the models. Get ahead of the curve and take your development to new heights wth Podman AI Lab!
There are many ways to run models locally. This extension fits perfectly into your local container workflow and exposes LLMs through inference APIs that you can directly access from your application containers. Beyond that you can use playgrounds to optimize your inference parameters and recipes that help you with ready made examples.

#### Procedure

First thing you need to do is to install the extension itself:

1. [Install the `Podman AI Lab` extension](/docs/ai-lab/installing).

#### Next steps

1. [Download a model](/docs/ai-lab/download-model).
1. [Start an inference server for a model](/docs/ai-lab/start-inference-server).
1. [Creating a playground to interact with a model](/docs/ai-lab/create-playground).
1. [Start a recipe](/docs/ai-lab/start-recipe).
