Embeddings

Generate embeddings for a Hugging Face dataset — text or images — with one command, on a cloud GPU, no infra. The output lands back on the Hub as a new dataset (or, with the Lance variant, as a searchable vector index you can query over hf:// without downloading).

There is one simple default and two variants; they are separate single-file scripts because their dependencies (sentence-transformers vs vLLM vs Lance) are too different to share one env.

Script	Use it for	Engine
generate-embeddings.py	The default. Text or images. Simple, fast, runs anywhere.	sentence-transformers
generate-embeddings-vllm.py	Max throughput on large decoder embedding models (Qwen3-Embedding).	vLLM pooling
embed-to-lance.py	Get a searchable vector index as a Hub dataset (the "vector DB" path).	sentence-transformers + Lance

Quick start

# Text — pick a model from the MTEB leaderboard
hf jobs uv run --flavor l4x1 -s HF_TOKEN \
  https://huggingface.co/datasets/uv-scripts/embeddings/raw/main/generate-embeddings.py \
  stanfordnlp/imdb  your-name/imdb-embeddings --column text

# Images (CLIP)
hf jobs uv run --flavor l4x1 -s HF_TOKEN \
  https://huggingface.co/datasets/uv-scripts/embeddings/raw/main/generate-embeddings.py \
  your-name/photos your-name/photos-embeddings --modality image --column image --model clip-ViT-B-32

Always try --max-samples 100 --private first.

Which model?

Find the current best — don't trust a fixed list (embedding quality moves fast). Check the MTEB leaderboard, or from the CLI:

hf models ls --filter sentence-transformers --sort trending_score --limit 20   # what's hot now
hf models ls --filter sentence-transformers --sort downloads --limit 20        # proven workhorses

(Sort by trending_score/downloads, not created_at — the newest list is mostly test repos.)

See HEURISTICS.md for the full "which model / GPU / batch for your data" guide (measured). The table below is examples benchmarked 2026-07, not a permanent answer:

Model	Params	Dim	Note
sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2	22M	384	Fastest; safe default
BAAI/bge-base-en-v1.5	109M	768	Strong English quality/speed balance
BAAI/bge-m3	568M	1024	Multilingual + long context (slower)
Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B	596M	1024	Top open MTEB; decoder → use the vLLM variant / A100

Images: clip-ViT-B-32 (fast) or clip-ViT-L-14 (higher quality).

Prompts (retrieval correctness — read this if you're building search)

Many retrieval models need a different prefix for documents vs queries, and getting it wrong silently degrades results. Worse, you can't trust model.prompts: current sentence-transformers injects a placeholder {"query": "", "document": ""} even for models that register nothing, so e5 / nomic / bge look "prompt-less" via that attribute while their real prefixes live only in the model card.

generate-embeddings.py handles this. It embeds a document corpus by default and picks the document convention in this order: (1) the model's registered prompt if it ships a real one (e.g. Qwen3-Embedding), else (2) a small built-in family table, else (3) no prefix. The chosen prefix is logged and written into the output dataset card.

Family	Query prefix	Document prefix
e5 (intfloat/e5-*, multilingual-e5-*, non-instruct)	query:	passage:
nomic (nomic-embed-text-*)	search_query:	search_document:
bge English (bge-*-en-*)	Represent this sentence for searching relevant passages:	(none)
bge-m3	(none)	(none)
Qwen3-Embedding	registered by the model	(none)
anything else	—	— (pass --prompt if it needs one)

Override the auto-pick:

• --query-mode — embed inputs as queries, not documents (flips the convention)
• --prompt 'passage: ' — force a raw prefix (highest precedence; --prompt '' forces none)
• --prompt-name query — use a prompt the model registered, by name
• --no-auto-prompt — turn off the family table (still honours registered prompts)

Instruct-style models (e5-*-instruct, gte-Qwen…) are deliberately left to their registered prompt or your explicit --prompt, since the instruction is task-specific.

Batch size (auto by default)

--batch-size auto (the default) times a few batch sizes on a warmup sample and keeps the fastest that fits — bigger isn't always faster, because variable-length text wastes compute on padding. Pass --batch-size 128 to pin it.

Which GPU? (measured, 20k rows, seq-cap 512)

Throughput (rows/s) and cost per 1M rows:

Model	L4 ($0.80/hr)	A10G ($1.50/hr)	A100 ($2.50/hr)
all-MiniLM-L6-v2	912 · $0.24/1M	1099 · $0.38/1M	1372 · $0.51/1M
bge-base-en-v1.5	119 · $1.87/1M	206 · $2.02/1M	261 · $2.66/1M
Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B	59 · $3.77/1M	93 · $4.48/1M	250 · $2.78/1M

Default to l4x1 — cheapest per 1M rows for encoder models. For decoder embedders (Qwen3-Embedding) the A100 is both faster and cheaper per 1M (they use the extra compute), and the vLLM variant roughly doubles throughput again (Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B: ~121 rows/s on an L4 via generate-embeddings-vllm.py, ~2× the sentence-transformers path).

Images embed much faster than text: clip-ViT-B-32 runs ~395 img/s on an L4 at the auto-picked batch (bs=32; ~455 on an A10G). Full-resolution photos land nearer ~215 img/s — decode/resize is a real CPU tax on fast models.

The vector-DB path (embed-to-lance.py)

Writes a Lance table with a vector index and pushes it as a Hub dataset. You (or anyone you share it with) can then search it directly over hf:// without downloading it:

import lance
ds = lance.dataset("hf://datasets/your-name/my-vecdb/vecdb.lance")   # opens in ~1s, no download
hits = ds.to_table(nearest={"column": "vector", "q": query_vec, "k": 5})

Query prompts: embed query_vec with the model's query prefix (e5 → "query: ", nomic → "search_query: "; the run prints the right one). Documents and queries use different prefixes on these models — mismatching them silently degrades retrieval.

End-to-end this is fast and cheap: all 241,787 Simple-English-Wikipedia articles → a searchable Lance vector DB on the Hub in ~4.5 min for ~$0.07 on a single L4 (load → embed → index → push, with all-MiniLM-L6-v2; pass --model to trade speed for quality).

Best for share-and-search over a corpus; for high-QPS serving, pull the dataset local first.