vastai

vast-claude-plugin

A Claude Code plugin for Vast.ai. Rent, launch, monitor, and tear down GPU instances — plus volumes, serverless endpoints, and billing — without leaving your editor.

The plugin combines two layers:

• Five slash commands wrap the highest-frequency renter operations with safe defaults.
• A bundled vastai skill gives Claude full command-reference knowledge of the vastai CLI, so anything the slash commands don't cover (ssh, copy, logs, exec, destroy, volumes, serverless, environment variables, …) works through natural language.

Slash commands

Command	What it does
/vastai:setup [api-key]	Stores your API key, registers your SSH public key with Vast, and verifies the credential against vastai show user. Run this once before anything else — launching an instance before an SSH key is registered produces an unreachable host.
/vastai:status [instance-id]	Snapshot of a single instance or all of yours. Flags terminal states (exited, unknown, offline) so polling loops actually terminate.
/vastai:cost	Account balance, current burn rate ($/hr across active instances), and projected 24-hour spend. Useful as a pre-flight check before launching anything large.
/vastai:search [filter]	Finds the cheapest rentable offers matching a filter, sorted by total $/hr. Recognises "spot" / "bid" in the filter and switches to interruptible bid-mode pricing automatically.
/vastai:launch <offer-id> [image] [--disk N] [--label STR]	Launches an offer with sensible defaults: pytorch/pytorch:@vastai-automatic-tag, 20 GB disk, direct SSH, JSON output. Parses the returned new_contract ID so subsequent commands can reference it.

Every vastai invocation includes --raw so responses come back as parseable JSON.

Natural language (the skill)

Anything outside the slash-command set works conversationally. The bundled vastai skill auto-loads when Claude detects Vast-related intent — GPU rental, SSH, copying files to/from an instance, env vars, billing, serverless, volumes, and so on.

"Find a verified 4090 under $0.40/hr and launch it with pytorch."

"SSH into instance 12345 and tail /var/log/nvidia-installer.log."

"Set HF_TOKEN to hf_xxxxx on my running instance."

"Destroy everything except instance 12345."

To force the skill to load explicitly, mention it by name ("using the vastai skill, …").

Install

Prerequisites

pip install vastai

From the Claude Plugins marketplace (recommended)

/plugin install vastai@claude-plugins-official

From source

git clone https://github.com/vast-ai/vast-claude-plugin.git
claude --plugin-dir ./vast-claude-plugin

First run

/vastai:setup

You'll be prompted for an API key from https://cloud.vast.ai/account. The command then registers your SSH public key (~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub by default, falling back to id_rsa.pub) and verifies the credential by querying your user record.

Layout

vast-claude-plugin/
├── .claude-plugin/plugin.json   # marketplace manifest
├── commands/
│   ├── setup.md                 # /vastai:setup
│   ├── status.md                # /vastai:status
│   ├── cost.md                  # /vastai:cost
│   ├── search.md                # /vastai:search
│   └── launch.md                # /vastai:launch
├── skills/vastai/SKILL.md       # vendored from vast-ai/vast-cli
├── VENDORED_FROM.md             # pins the upstream SHA
├── PATCHES.md                   # local deltas pending upstream PRs
└── TESTING.md                   # acceptance test plan

License

MIT — see LICENSE. SKILL.md is vendored from vast-ai/vast-cli (also MIT); local edits are tracked in PATCHES.md for upstream propagation.