name: huggingface-hub

description: Hugging Face Hub CLI (hf) — search, download, and upload models and datasets, manage repos, query datasets with SQL, deploy inference endpoints, manage Spaces and buckets.

version: 1.0.0

author: Hugging Face

license: MIT

tags: [huggingface, hf, models, datasets, hub, mlops]

Hugging Face CLI (hf) Reference Guide

The hf command is the modern command-line interface for interacting with the Hugging Face Hub, providing tools to manage repositories, models, datasets, and Spaces.

> IMPORTANT: The hf command replaces the now deprecated huggingface-cli command.

Quick Start

* Installation: curl -LsSf https://hf.co/cli/install.sh | bash -s

* Help: Use hf --help to view all available functions and real-world examples.

* Authentication: Recommended via HF_TOKEN environment variable or the --token flag.

Core Commands

General Operations

* hf download REPO_ID: Download files from the Hub.

* hf upload REPO_ID: Upload files/folders (recommended for single-commit).

* hf upload-large-folder REPO_ID LOCAL_PATH: Recommended for resumable uploads of large directories.

* hf sync: Sync files between a local directory and a bucket.

* hf env / hf version: View environment and version details.

Authentication (hf auth)

* login / logout: Manage sessions using tokens from huggingface.co/settings/tokens.

* list / switch: Manage and toggle between multiple stored access tokens.

* whoami: Identify the currently logged-in account.

Repository Management (hf repos)

* create / delete: Create or permanently remove repositories.

* duplicate: Clone a model, dataset, or Space to a new ID.

* move: Transfer a repository between namespaces.

* branch / tag: Manage Git-like references.

* delete-files: Remove specific files using patterns.

Specialized Hub Interactions

Datasets & Models

* Datasets: hf datasets list, info, and parquet (list parquet URLs).

* SQL Queries: hf datasets sql SQL — Execute raw SQL via DuckDB against dataset parquet URLs.

* Models: hf models list and info.

* Papers: hf papers list — View daily papers.

Discussions & Pull Requests (hf discussions)

* Manage the lifecycle of Hub contributions: list, create, info, comment, close, reopen, and rename.

* diff: View changes in a PR.

* merge: Finalize pull requests.

Infrastructure & Compute

* Endpoints: Deploy and manage Inference Endpoints (deploy, pause, resume, scale-to-zero, catalog).

* Jobs: Run compute tasks on HF infrastructure. Includes hf jobs uv for running Python scripts with inline dependencies and stats for resource monitoring.

* Spaces: Manage interactive apps. Includes dev-mode and hot-reload for Python files without full restarts.

Storage & Automation

* Buckets: Full S3-like bucket management (create, cp, mv, rm, sync).

* Cache: Manage local storage with list, prune (remove detached revisions), and verify (checksum checks).

* Webhooks: Automate workflows by managing Hub webhooks (create, watch, enable/disable).

* Collections: Organize Hub items into collections (add-item, update, list).

Advanced Usage & Tips

Global Flags

* --format json: Produces machine-readable output for automation.

* -q / --quiet: Limits output to IDs only.

Extensions & Skills

* Extensions: Extend CLI functionality via GitHub repositories using hf extensions install REPO_ID.

* Skills: Manage AI assistant skills with hf skills add.