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Provides structured workflows for interacting with the Hugging Face ecosystem: Hub repository search, model loading and inference, dataset management, PEFT/LoRA fine-tuning, and Spaces deployment. Integrates via MCP tools when available and falls back to Python APIs and the huggingface_hub CLI.
When to Invoke
Skill({ skill: 'huggingface' });
Invoke when:
Searching for models, datasets, or Spaces on the Hub
Loading and running inference with Transformers models
Managing datasets with the datasets library
Fine-tuning models with PEFT/LoRA
Deploying or querying Hugging Face Spaces
Selecting the right model for a task (NLP, vision, audio, multimodal)
MCP Tool Integration
When the Hugging Face MCP server is available, prefer MCP tools over direct API calls.
from transformers import pipeline
# Text generation
generator = pipeline(
"text-generation",
model="meta-llama/Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct",
device_map="auto",
torch_dtype="auto",
)
result = generator("What is the capital of France?", max_new_tokens=100)
print(result[0]["generated_text"])
Verify:result[0]["generated_text"] contains coherent continuation. Check device_map resolves to GPU if available.
AutoModel Pattern (Explicit Control)
from transformers import AutoTokenizer, AutoModelForCausalLM
import torch
model_id = "microsoft/Phi-3-mini-4k-instruct"
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_id)
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
model_id,
torch_dtype=torch.bfloat16,
device_map="auto",
attn_implementation="flash_attention_2", # if available
)
inputs = tokenizer("Hello, world!", return_tensors="pt").to(model.device)
with torch.no_grad():
outputs = model.generate(**inputs, max_new_tokens=50)
print(tokenizer.decode(outputs[0], skip_special_tokens=True))
Inference API (Serverless)
from huggingface_hub import InferenceClient
client = InferenceClient(token="hf_...") # or use HF_TOKEN env var# Text generation
result = client.text_generation(
"Tell me a joke",
model="mistralai/Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.3",
max_new_tokens=200,
)
print(result)
# Chat completion (OpenAI-compatible)
response = client.chat_completion(
model="meta-llama/Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Explain quantum entanglement"}],
max_tokens=300,
)
print(response.choices[0].message.content)
Verify: Check response.choices[0].finish_reason == "stop" for complete generation.
Dataset Management
Loading Datasets
from datasets import load_dataset
# Public dataset
ds = load_dataset("squad", split="train")
print(ds.column_names) # ['id', 'title', 'context', 'question', 'answers']# With streaming (large datasets)
ds_stream = load_dataset("allenai/c4", "en", split="train", streaming=True)
sample = next(iter(ds_stream))
# From Hub with specific config
ds = load_dataset("glue", "mrpc", split={"train": "train", "val": "validation"})
# Significant speedup for supported architectures (Llama, Mistral, Phi)from liger_kernel.transformers import apply_liger_kernel_to_llama
# Apply before model loading
apply_liger_kernel_to_llama()
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
"meta-llama/Llama-3.1-8B",
torch_dtype=torch.bfloat16,
device_map="auto",
attn_implementation="flash_attention_2", # 2-4x throughput improvement
)
Verify: Loss decreases from epoch 1 to 3. trainer.state.log_history[-1]["train_loss"] should be < initial loss. Training time with packing + Flash Attention + Liger Kernels is typically 5-20x faster than naive baseline.
Merging Adapters
from peft import PeftModel
# Load base + adapter
base_model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained("meta-llama/Llama-3.1-8B")
model = PeftModel.from_pretrained(base_model, "username/my-lora-adapter")
# Merge and unload (creates standalone model)
merged = model.merge_and_unload()
merged.save_pretrained("./merged-model")
Spaces Deployment
Gradio Space
# app.py for a Gradio Spaceimport gradio as gr
from transformers import pipeline
pipe = pipeline("text-classification", model="distilbert-base-uncased-finetuned-sst-2-english")
defclassify(text):
result = pipe(text)[0]
returnf"{result['label']}: {result['score']:.3f}"
demo = gr.Interface(fn=classify, inputs="text", outputs="text", title="Sentiment Classifier")
demo.launch()
requirements.txt:
transformers>=4.40.0
torch>=2.2.0
gradio>=4.0.0
Querying Existing Spaces
from gradio_client import Client
client = Client("hf-audio/whisper-large-v3")
result = client.predict(
audio="path/to/audio.wav",
api_name="/predict",
)
print(result)
Deploying via API
from huggingface_hub import HfApi
api = HfApi(token="hf_...")
# Create Space
api.create_repo(
repo_id="username/my-space",
repo_type="space",
space_sdk="gradio",
private=False,
)
# Upload files
api.upload_folder(
folder_path="./my-space-app",
repo_id="username/my-space",
repo_type="space",
)
Verify: Space appears at https://huggingface.co/spaces/username/my-space and status is RUNNING.
Before fine-tuning, evaluate whether prompting alone solves your problem. Fine-tuning is justified for: domain-specific knowledge injection, controlled output style, hallucination reduction in narrow domains, and specialized task optimization at scale.
Evaluate fine-tuned models in production-like conditions:
# Serve the fine-tuned model with TGI or vLLM for realistic latency testing
docker run --gpus all -p 8080:80 \
ghcr.io/huggingface/text-generation-inference:latest \
--model-id username/my-finetuned-model
# Run evaluation harness against the served model
lm_eval --model openai-chat-completions \
--model_args base_url=http://localhost:8080/v1,model=username/my-finetuned-model \
--tasks mmlu,hellaswag \
--output_path ./eval-results/
Verify: Perplexity on held-out validation set decreases. Task-specific benchmark scores match or exceed baseline model.
Anti-Patterns
Never hardcode HF tokens โ use HF_TOKEN env var or huggingface-cli login
Never load full model for inference-only on CPU โ use device_map="auto" or Inference API
Never skip attn_implementation โ for supported models, flash_attention_2 gives 2-4x speedup
Never ignore tokenizer warnings โ padding/truncation mismatches cause silent accuracy drops
Never push private data to public repos โ set private=True or use push_to_hub(private=True)
Never use pipeline() in production fine-tuning loops โ use AutoModel + Trainer for control
Never merge adapters before evaluation โ evaluate PEFT model first, merge only if satisfactory
Never use model.generate() without max_new_tokens โ unbounded generation hangs
Never skip packing for SFT โ packing=True in SFTConfig dramatically reduces training time by filling context windows
Never use fp16=True when bf16 is available โ bfloat16 is more numerically stable for LLM fine-tuning on Ampere+ GPUs
Never evaluate only on training distribution โ use held-out eval set and standard benchmarks via lm-evaluation-harness
python-backend-expert โ Python project setup and best practices
debugging โ Systematic debugging for training instabilities
mcp-catalog โ MCP server selection and configuration
Search Protocol
Before starting any Hugging Face task, search for existing model loading code and dataset pipelines:
pnpm search:code "from transformers OR from datasets OR InferenceClient OR SFTTrainer"
pnpm search:code "huggingface fine-tuning"
Use Skill({ skill: 'ripgrep' }) to find existing .py training scripts. Use Skill({ skill: 'code-semantic-search' }) to find similar ML pipeline patterns by intent.
Memory Protocol (MANDATORY)
Before starting any task, you must query semantic memory and read recent static memory:
node .claude/lib/memory/memory-search.cjs "huggingface transformers fine-tuning model selection"
