Agent Skills: HuggingFace Model Download

Get the correct command syntax for downloading models from HuggingFace. Use when downloading models, running "hf download", or pulling models from HuggingFace repos.

UncategorizedID: trevors/dot-claude/downloading-hf-models

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skills/downloading-hf-models/SKILL.md

Skill Metadata

Name
downloading-hf-models
Description
Get the correct command syntax for downloading models from HuggingFace. Use when downloading models, running "hf download", or pulling models from HuggingFace repos.

HuggingFace Model Download

Command Pattern

Always use uv run with the HuggingFace Hub package as an inline dependency:

uv run --with huggingface_hub hf download <repo> <file> --local-dir <path>

Common Mistakes to Avoid

  • Wrong: pip install huggingface_hub && huggingface-cli download ...
  • Wrong: uv run hf download ... (missing --with)
  • Wrong: uv run --with "huggingface_hub[cli]" ... (the [cli] extra doesn't exist, the CLI is included in the base package)

Syntax Reference

Download a specific file

uv run --with huggingface_hub hf download <org>/<repo> <filename> --local-dir <destination>

Download multiple files

uv run --with huggingface_hub hf download <org>/<repo> <file1> <file2> --local-dir <destination>

Download with glob pattern

uv run --with huggingface_hub hf download <org>/<repo> --include "*.gguf" --local-dir <destination>

Warning: Large GGUF models are often split into parts (e.g., model.gguf.part-000, .part-001, etc.). Use --include "*.gguf*" (note the trailing *) to match both single GGUFs and split parts. Use --dry-run first to check what files will be downloaded.

Download entire repo

uv run --with huggingface_hub hf download <org>/<repo> --local-dir <destination>

Notes

  • HF_TOKEN environment variable is used automatically for gated models
  • --local-dir places files directly in the target directory (no nested .cache structure)
  • Downloads are resumable — re-running the same command skips already-downloaded files
  • For GGUF models, download only the quant you need rather than the whole repo