model-download

name	model-download
description	Download GGUF models from HuggingFace directly into LM Studio's model directory. Triggers on "download model", "get model", "grab model", "install model".
type	skill

Model Downloader

Download GGUF model files from HuggingFace into LM Studio's model directory so they can be loaded and tested with LiteBench.

LM Studio Model Directory

Models go to: ~/.lmstudio/models/<publisher>/<model-name>/

On Windows: C:/Users/<username>/.lmstudio/models/

Workflow

Step 1: Search HuggingFace

curl -s "https://huggingface.co/api/models?search=<query>+gguf&limit=10" | python -c "import sys,json; d=json.load(sys.stdin); [print(m['id']) for m in d]"

Step 2: List Available Files

curl -s "https://huggingface.co/api/models/<repo-id>/tree/main" | python -c "
import sys, json
files = json.load(sys.stdin)
for f in files:
    if f.get('path','').endswith('.gguf'):
        size_mb = f.get('size', 0) / 1024 / 1024
        print(f'{f[\"path\"]:60s} {size_mb:.0f} MB')
"

Step 3: Download

Prefer Q4_K_M quantization (good balance of quality and size).

mkdir -p ~/.lmstudio/models/<publisher>/<model-GGUF>/
curl -L -o ~/.lmstudio/models/<publisher>/<model-GGUF>/<filename>.gguf \
  "https://huggingface.co/<repo-id>/resolve/main/<filename>.gguf"

Step 4: Verify

ls -lh ~/.lmstudio/models/<publisher>/<model-GGUF>/

The model will appear in LM Studio after a rescan. User needs to load it manually in LM Studio's UI.

Recommended Models to Download

For tool calling / agent benchmarking:

Model	Repo	Size	Why
xLAM 2 1B	Salesforce/xLAM-2-1b-fc-r-gguf	~940MB	Purpose-built for function calling
xLAM 2 8B	Salesforce/xLAM-2-8b-fc-r-gguf	~5GB	#1 on BFCL leaderboard
Hermes 3 8B	NousResearch/Hermes-3-Llama-3.1-8B-GGUF	~5GB	Gold standard structured tool use
Llama 3.1 8B	lmstudio-community/Meta-Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct-GGUF	~5GB	Meta native tool calling
Llama 3.2 3B	lmstudio-community/Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct-GGUF	~2GB	Smallest Llama with tools