CLI Reference

Command-line interface for Cactus LLM completion, transcription, function calling, and hybrid cloud routing

The Cactus CLI provides a command-line interface for running AI models locally with automatic cloud handoff.

cactus run

cactus transcribe

Installation

brew install cactus-compute/cactus/cactus

macOS:

git clone https://github.com/cactus-compute/cactus && cd cactus && source ./setup

Linux:

sudo apt-get install python3 python3-venv python3-pip cmake build-essential libcurl4-openssl-dev
git clone https://github.com/cactus-compute/cactus && cd cactus && source ./setup

Commands

Command	Description
`cactus run [model]`	Opens interactive playground (auto-downloads model)
`cactus auth`	Configure cloud API credentials for hybrid routing
`cactus download [model]`	Downloads model weights to `./weights`
`cactus convert [model] [dir]`	Converts model to `.cact` format, supports LoRA merging via `--lora <path>`
`cactus build`	Builds native libraries for ARM (`--apple` or `--android`)
`cactus test`	Runs tests with platform/model flags (`--ios`, `--android`, `--model`, `--precision`)
`cactus transcribe [model]`	Transcribe audio file (`--file`) or live microphone input
`cactus clean`	Removes build artifacts
`cactus --help`	Shows all available commands and flags

Download Models

# Download a model for offline use
cactus download LiquidAI/LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct

# Download with specific precision
cactus download LiquidAI/LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct --precision int8

# Models are stored in ./weights/

LoRA Fine-tuning

# Convert a model with LoRA adapter
cactus convert LiquidAI/LFM2-350M ./output --lora path/to/lora

Testing

# Test on iOS simulator
cactus test --ios --model LiquidAI/LFM2-350M

# Test on Android with specific precision
cactus test --android --model google/gemma-3-270m-it --precision int8

Build SDK Libraries

# Build for Apple platforms (iOS/macOS)
cactus build --apple

# Build for Android
cactus build --android

# Build Flutter bindings
cactus build --flutter