Instructions to use NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview with libraries, inference providers, notebooks, and local apps. Follow these links to get started.

Libraries

How to use NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview with Transformers:

# Use a pipeline as a high-level helper
from transformers import pipeline

pipe = pipeline("image-text-to-text", model="NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview")
messages = [
    {
        "role": "user",
        "content": [
            {"type": "image", "url": "https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/p-blog/candy.JPG"},
            {"type": "text", "text": "What animal is on the candy?"}
        ]
    },
]
pipe(text=messages)

# Load model directly
from transformers import AutoProcessor, AutoModelForImageTextToText

processor = AutoProcessor.from_pretrained("NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview")
model = AutoModelForImageTextToText.from_pretrained("NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview")
messages = [
    {
        "role": "user",
        "content": [
            {"type": "image", "url": "https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/p-blog/candy.JPG"},
            {"type": "text", "text": "What animal is on the candy?"}
        ]
    },
]
inputs = processor.apply_chat_template(
	messages,
	add_generation_prompt=True,
	tokenize=True,
	return_dict=True,
	return_tensors="pt",
).to(model.device)

outputs = model.generate(**inputs, max_new_tokens=40)
print(processor.decode(outputs[0][inputs["input_ids"].shape[-1]:]))

Inference
Notebooks
Google Colab
Kaggle
Local Apps

vLLM

How to use NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview with vLLM:

Install from pip and serve model

# Install vLLM from pip:
pip install vllm
# Start the vLLM server:
vllm serve "NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview"
# Call the server using curl (OpenAI-compatible API):
curl -X POST "http://localhost:8000/v1/chat/completions" \
	-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
	--data '{
		"model": "NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview",
		"messages": [
			{
				"role": "user",
				"content": [
					{
						"type": "text",
						"text": "Describe this image in one sentence."
					},
					{
						"type": "image_url",
						"image_url": {
							"url": "https://cdn.britannica.com/61/93061-050-99147DCE/Statue-of-Liberty-Island-New-York-Bay.jpg"
						}
					}
				]
			}
		]
	}'

Use Docker

docker model run hf.co/NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview

SGLang

How to use NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview with SGLang:

Install from pip and serve model

# Install SGLang from pip:
pip install sglang
# Start the SGLang server:
python3 -m sglang.launch_server \
    --model-path "NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview" \
    --host 0.0.0.0 \
    --port 30000
# Call the server using curl (OpenAI-compatible API):
curl -X POST "http://localhost:30000/v1/chat/completions" \
	-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
	--data '{
		"model": "NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview",
		"messages": [
			{
				"role": "user",
				"content": [
					{
						"type": "text",
						"text": "Describe this image in one sentence."
					},
					{
						"type": "image_url",
						"image_url": {
							"url": "https://cdn.britannica.com/61/93061-050-99147DCE/Statue-of-Liberty-Island-New-York-Bay.jpg"
						}
					}
				]
			}
		]
	}'

Use Docker images

docker run --gpus all \
    --shm-size 32g \
    -p 30000:30000 \
    -v ~/.cache/huggingface:/root/.cache/huggingface \
    --env "HF_TOKEN=<secret>" \
    --ipc=host \
    lmsysorg/sglang:latest \
    python3 -m sglang.launch_server \
        --model-path "NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview" \
        --host 0.0.0.0 \
        --port 30000
# Call the server using curl (OpenAI-compatible API):
curl -X POST "http://localhost:30000/v1/chat/completions" \
	-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
	--data '{
		"model": "NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview",
		"messages": [
			{
				"role": "user",
				"content": [
					{
						"type": "text",
						"text": "Describe this image in one sentence."
					},
					{
						"type": "image_url",
						"image_url": {
							"url": "https://cdn.britannica.com/61/93061-050-99147DCE/Statue-of-Liberty-Island-New-York-Bay.jpg"
						}
					}
				]
			}
		]
	}'

Docker Model Runner
How to use NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview with Docker Model Runner:
```
docker model run hf.co/NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview
```

borealis-4b-instruct-preview

File size: 3,386 Bytes

---
license: gemma
datasets:
- NbAiLab/aurora-sft-2512-filtered
language:
- 'no'
- nb
- nn
base_model:
- google/gemma-3-4b-it
pipeline_tag: image-text-to-text
library_name: transformers
tags:
- conversational
- instruct
- experimental
---

# Borealis 4B Instruct (Preview)

Release: Dec 22nd, 2025.

## Model summary
**NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview** is a **4B-parameter** instruction-tuned **preview** model intended for early testing and feedback. It is an **experiment** and should be treated as pre-release quality.

This model is based on [**google/gemma-3-4b-it**](https://huggingface.co/google/gemma-3-4b-it), and fine-tuned on textual instructions only.

| Model | Bits | Format |
|---|---:|---|
| [NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview](https://huggingface.co/NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview) | BF16 | Transformers (safetensors) |
| [NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview-gguf](https://huggingface.co/NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview-gguf) | 8 | GGUF (`q8_0`) |
| [NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview-gguf](https://huggingface.co/NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview-gguf) | 16 | GGUF (`f16`) |
| [NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview-gguf](https://huggingface.co/NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview-gguf) | BF16 | GGUF (`bf16`) |
| [NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview-mlx](https://huggingface.co/NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview-mlx) | 32 | MLX |
| [NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview-mlx-8bits](https://huggingface.co/NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview-mlx-8bits) | 8 | MLX (quantized) |

## Training data
Supervised fine-tuning (SFT) uses **NbAiLab/aurora-sft-2512** (not released yet).

## ⚠️ Safety / alignment disclaimer (important)
This is a **preview experiment** and **has not been safety-aligned yet**. The model may produce **harmful, biased, or insensitive** outputs (including content that is offensive, unsafe, or inappropriate). Do not use it for safety-critical or high-stakes applications, and add your own safety mitigations if deploying.

## Intended use
- Norwegian-centric assistant-style tasks (e.g., drafting, summarization, Q&A, light reasoning).
- Assesstment of Norwegian writing style and quality.
- Early evaluation of behavior, language coverage (Norwegian / Bokmål / Nynorsk), and quality.

## Limitations
- Preview quality; outputs may be unstable and may hallucinate.
- Not aligned for safety; may follow harmful instructions or generate problematic content (see disclaimer above).

## Weights & formats

### Transformers (original)
- **NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview** (safetensors).

### GGUF quantizations
Available in [**NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview-gguf**](https://huggingface.co/NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview-gguf):
- `model-q8_0.gguf`
- `model-f16.gguf`
- `model-bf16.gguf`

Use:
```bash
ollama run hf.co/NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview-gguf:BF16
```

### MLX (Apple Silicon)
Available in [**NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview-mlx**](https://huggingface.co/NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview-mlx) and quantized to [8 bits](https://huggingface.co/NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview-mlx-8bits).

Use:
```bash
# Install MLX LM
uv tool install mlx-lm

# Interactive chat REPL
mlx_lm.chat --model "NbAiLab/borealis-4b-instruct-preview-mlx"
```

## Acknowledgements
Thanks to the **Gemma** team at Google for releasing Gemma 3 and to everyone contributing feedback on this preview.