Skip to content

feat: Hugging Face model browser — search, download, and manage models from HF #466

Description

@rexlunae

Inspiration: Unsloth

Unsloth lets you search + download + run any model (GGUF, safetensors, LoRA adapters) from Hugging Face directly within the UI. It also auto-detects pre-existing model downloads from HF cache, LM Studio, etc.

What RustyClaw could do

Add a Hugging Face integration layer:

  1. Search models: rustyclaw model search "qwen 7b" — searches HF with filters (task, size, license, likes)
  2. Download models: rustyclaw model pull unsloth/Qwen3.5-4B-GGUF:UD-Q4_K_XL — downloads to local cache
  3. Auto-detect existing models: Scan ~/.cache/huggingface/, ~/.cache/lm-studio/, Ollama's model dir for already-downloaded models
  4. Model info: rustyclaw model info <id> — shows size, quant, context length, recommended params, license
  5. List local models: rustyclaw model list — all locally available models across Ollama, HF cache, etc.

Integration with existing systems

RustyClaw already has:

  • ollama_manage tool for Ollama model lifecycle
  • Provider registry with Ollama as a provider
  • Model registry in models/registry.rs

This would add a Hugging Face client that complements (not replaces) the Ollama path. A model downloaded from HF could be served via Ollama or llama.cpp.

Scope

  • rustyclaw-core: HuggingFace client (using hf-hub crate or raw API)
  • rustyclaw-cli: rustyclaw model subcommand with search/pull/list/info
  • Caching layer respecting HF_HOME/HF_HUB_CACHE env vars
  • Optional hf feature flag

Prior art

  • Unsloth Studio's model search + download UX
  • huggingface_hub Python library
  • hf-hub Rust crate: https://crates.io/crates/hf-hub
  • Ollama's model pull functionality

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    enhancementNew feature or request

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions