Get started with distil labs
distil labs is a developer platform where engineers train and deploy small models that match frontier accuracy at 80% lower cost.
Start with a coding agent
Section titled “Start with a coding agent”claude "Let's get started with distillabs.ai/onboarding.md"Runs in your terminal.
codex "Let's get started with distillabs.ai/onboarding.md"Runs in your terminal.
Let's get started with distillabs.ai/onboarding.mdOpen a new chat in Cursor and paste this line.
Let's get started with distillabs.ai/onboarding.mdPaste this line into any agent that can read a URL and run commands.
Your agent installs the CLI, creates your account, and trains your first model with you. It stops for your go-ahead at four points, so nothing runs that you have not seen. The whole flow takes 30 to 45 minutes, and jobs run for 20 to 35 of those minutes.
Start with the CLI
Section titled “Start with the CLI”curl -fsSL https://cli-assets.distillabs.ai/install.sh | sh
distil signup
distil signup opens your browser and hands the session back, so you finish signed in. If you
already have an account, run distil auth instead. You can also sign up at
app.distillabs.ai/sign-up.
Then train and deploy a model with five commands. The build overview covers each one:
distil seed-dataset create --data ./my-data-dir
# Seed dataset created with ID: <seed-dataset-id>
distil training-dataset create-from-seed-dataset <seed-dataset-id>
# Training dataset created with ID: <training-dataset-id>
distil slm create-from-training-dataset <training-dataset-id>
# SLM created with ID: <slm-id>
distil deployment create-from-slm <slm-id>
distil deployment endpoint <deployment-id> # URL and API key
Your trained model is ready for hosted inference, or you can run it locally.
Next steps
Section titled “Next steps”- Account and authentication - create an account and sign in
- Ways to use distil labs - the CLI, the Claude skill, the REST API and the dashboard
- Building a model - the pipeline end to end
- Task selection - pick the task type first, it sets everything else
- Turn production traces into training data - start from logged traffic instead of a curated dataset
- CLI reference - every command
- API reference - the same platform over HTTP