Build your AI application with an AI Lab extension in Podman Desktop

Learning path | 2 resources | 20 mins | Published on May 19, 2025
Ian Lawson Ramakrishna Yekulla

Discover how you can use the Podman AI Lab extension for Podman Desktop to work with large language models (LLMs) in a local environment. 

  1. Overview: Build your AI application with an AI Lab extension in Podman Desktop
  2. Initiate and optimize your model server Page | 20 mins

Overview: Build your AI application with an AI Lab extension in Podman Desktop

Podman-AI-lab-LP-feature-image

Podman AI Lab is an open source extension for Podman Desktop that allows you to work with large language models (LLMs) in a local environment. Podman AI Lab enables you to quickly integrate AI into your applications without depending on infrastructure beyond your laptop, from getting started with AI, to experimenting with models and prompts, to model serving and playgrounds for common generative AI use cases.

Podman Desktop provides a graphical interface that makes it easy to work with containers and bridges with Kubernetes. This means you can quickly develop and test your application in a containerized environment without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. The graphical interface also makes it easy to manage your containers and see what's happening in real time.

Prerequisites:

  • A basic understanding of Python. 
  • A basic understanding of containerization concepts.
  • A basic awareness of cloud-native concepts.
  • The latest version of Podman Desktop installed on your laptop.
  • Podman Desktop 1.10.3+ and Podman 5.0.1+
  • At least 12GB RAM, 4+ CPUs (more is better for large models). 

In this learning path, you will:

  • Set up Podman Desktop.
  • Download an AI model.
  • Learn about recipes.