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Unsloth Studio is a browser UI for running and training local models. This guide uses the official Linux installer on a Thunder Compute base instance, then exposes Studio through Thunder Compute port forwarding.
These commands were verified on a single A100 80 GB prototyping instance. The same setup path is suitable for other GPU instances with enough disk space for the models and datasets you plan to use.

Create the instance

Create a GPU instance with the base template and enough primary disk for Studio, models, and datasets:
tnr create --mode prototyping --gpu a100 --num-gpus 1 --vcpus 12 --template base --primary-disk 250
If A100 is unavailable, use the same shape with an available GPU:
# RTX A6000
tnr create --mode prototyping --gpu a6000 --num-gpus 1 --vcpus 6 --template base --primary-disk 250

# H100 80 GB
tnr create --mode prototyping --gpu h100 --num-gpus 1 --vcpus 16 --template base --primary-disk 250
Connect to the instance:
tnr status
tnr connect <instance-id>
Check that the GPU is visible:
nvidia-smi --query-gpu=name,memory.total,driver_version --format=csv,noheader
Create an A100 instance and verify the GPU

Install Unsloth Studio

Install the system packages that Unsloth Studio needs to build and run its local inference components:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y cmake libcurl4-openssl-dev
Run the official Unsloth Studio installer:
curl -fsSL https://unsloth.ai/install.sh | sh
The installer creates a Python environment under ~/.unsloth/studio and writes an unsloth launcher into ~/.local/bin. For the current SSH session, add the launcher directory to your path:
export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"
Install Unsloth Studio on a Thunder Compute instance

Start Studio

Start Unsloth Studio on port 8888 and listen on all interfaces:
nohup unsloth studio -H 0.0.0.0 -p 8888 > ~/unsloth-studio.log 2>&1 &
Check that Studio is running:
tail -n 40 ~/unsloth-studio.log
curl -s http://127.0.0.1:8888/api/health | python3 -m json.tool
The health endpoint should return a JSON response with "status":"healthy". Start Unsloth Studio and check the health endpoint
curl -I http://127.0.0.1:8888 may return 405 Method Not Allowed because Studio does not accept HEAD requests on /. Use curl http://127.0.0.1:8888 or /api/health instead.

Get the admin password

On first launch, Studio creates a default admin user named unsloth. Read the generated bootstrap password from the instance:
cat ~/.unsloth/studio/auth/.bootstrap_password
Use this password the first time you open Studio, then change it in the UI.

Open Studio in your browser

From a second terminal on your local machine, forward port 8888:
tnr ports forward <instance-id> --add 8888
Your Studio URL uses this format:
https://<instance-uuid>-8888.thundercompute.net
Open the URL in your browser and sign in with:
FieldValue
Usernameunsloth
PasswordThe value from ~/.unsloth/studio/auth/.bootstrap_password
After the bootstrap login, Studio prompts you to choose a new password for future sessions. Unsloth Studio first-run account setup screen

Stop Studio

Stop the Studio process when you are done using it:
pkill -f "unsloth studio"
exit
Then delete the instance from your local terminal:
tnr delete <instance-id>
Billing stops when the instance is deleted.

Docker Note

Unsloth also publishes an official unsloth/unsloth Docker image. Thunder Compute supports Docker with the --device nvidia.com/gpu=all flag, but Docker support is experimental because the instance itself is already containerized. Use the native installer above for the first Studio setup.

References