OCR Scripts - Development Notes
Active Scripts
DeepSeek-OCR v1 (deepseek-ocr-vllm.py)
✅ Production Ready
- Fully supported by vLLM
- Fast batch processing
- Tested and working on HF Jobs
LightOnOCR-2-1B (lighton-ocr2.py)
✅ Production Ready (Fixed 2026-01-29)
Status: Working with vLLM nightly
What was fixed:
- Root cause was NOT vLLM - it was the deprecated
HF_HUB_ENABLE_HF_TRANSFER=1env var - The script was setting this env var but
hf_transferpackage no longer exists - This caused download failures that manifested as "Can't load image processor" errors
- Fix: Removed the
HF_HUB_ENABLE_HF_TRANSFER=1setting from the script
Test results (2026-01-29):
- 10/10 samples processed successfully
- Clean markdown output with proper headers and paragraphs
- Output dataset:
davanstrien/lighton-ocr2-test-v4
Example usage:
hf jobs uv run --flavor a100-large \
-s HF_TOKEN \
https://huggingface.co/datasets/uv-scripts/ocr/raw/main/lighton-ocr2.py \
davanstrien/ufo-ColPali output-dataset \
--max-samples 10 --shuffle --seed 42
Model Info:
- Model:
lightonai/LightOnOCR-2-1B - Architecture: Pixtral ViT encoder + Qwen3 LLM
- Training: RLVR (Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards)
- Performance: 83.2% on OlmOCR-Bench, 42.8 pages/sec on H100
PaddleOCR-VL-1.5 (paddleocr-vl-1.5.py)
✅ Production Ready (Added 2026-01-30)
Status: Working with transformers
Note: Uses transformers backend (not vLLM) because PaddleOCR-VL only supports vLLM in server mode, which doesn't fit the single-command UV script pattern. Images are processed one at a time for stability.
Test results (2026-01-30):
- 10/10 samples processed successfully
- Processing time: ~50s per image on L4 GPU
- Output dataset:
davanstrien/paddleocr-vl15-final-test
Example usage:
hf jobs uv run --flavor l4x1 \
-s HF_TOKEN \
https://huggingface.co/datasets/uv-scripts/ocr/raw/main/paddleocr-vl-1.5.py \
davanstrien/ufo-ColPali output-dataset \
--max-samples 10 --shuffle --seed 42
Task modes:
ocr(default): General text extraction to markdowntable: Table extraction to HTML formatformula: Mathematical formula recognition to LaTeXchart: Chart and diagram analysisspotting: Text spotting with localization (uses higher resolution)seal: Seal and stamp recognition
Model Info:
- Model:
PaddlePaddle/PaddleOCR-VL-1.5 - Size: 0.9B parameters (ultra-compact)
- Performance: 94.5% SOTA on OmniDocBench v1.5
- Backend: Transformers (single image processing)
- Requires:
transformers>=5.0.0
Pending Development
DeepSeek-OCR-2 (Visual Causal Flow Architecture)
Status: ⏳ Waiting for vLLM upstream support
Context:
DeepSeek-OCR-2 is the next generation OCR model (3B parameters) with Visual Causal Flow architecture offering improved quality. We attempted to create a UV script (deepseek-ocr2-vllm.py) but encountered a blocker.
Blocker:
vLLM does not yet support DeepseekOCR2ForCausalLM architecture in the official release.
PR to Watch: 🔗 https://github.com/vllm-project/vllm/pull/33165
This PR adds DeepSeek-OCR-2 support but is currently:
- ⚠️ Open (not merged)
- Has unresolved review comments
- Pre-commit checks failing
- Issues: hardcoded parameters, device mismatch bugs, missing error handling
What's Needed:
- PR #33165 needs to be reviewed, fixed, and merged
- vLLM needs to release a version including the merge
- Then we can add these dependencies to our script:
# dependencies = [ # "datasets>=4.0.0", # "huggingface-hub", # "pillow", # "vllm", # "tqdm", # "toolz", # "torch", # "addict", # "matplotlib", # ]
Implementation Progress:
- ✅ Created
deepseek-ocr2-vllm.pyscript - ✅ Fixed dependency issues (pyarrow, datasets>=4.0.0)
- ✅ Tested script structure on HF Jobs
- ❌ Blocked: vLLM doesn't recognize architecture
Partial Implementation:
The file deepseek-ocr2-vllm.py exists in this repo but is not functional until vLLM support lands. Consider it a draft.
Testing Evidence: When we ran on HF Jobs, we got:
ValidationError: Model architectures ['DeepseekOCR2ForCausalLM'] are not supported for now.
Supported architectures: [...'DeepseekOCRForCausalLM'...]
Next Steps (when PR merges):
- Update
deepseek-ocr2-vllm.pydependencies to includeaddictandmatplotlib - Test on HF Jobs with small dataset (10 samples)
- Verify output quality
- Update README.md with DeepSeek-OCR-2 section
- Document v1 vs v2 differences
Alternative Approaches (if urgent):
- Create transformers-based script (slower, no vLLM batching)
- Use DeepSeek's official repo setup (complex, not UV-script compatible)
Model Information:
- Model ID:
deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-OCR-2 - Model Card: https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-OCR-2
- GitHub: https://github.com/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-OCR-2
- Parameters: 3B
- Resolution: (0-6)×768×768 + 1×1024×1024 patches
- Key improvement: Visual Causal Flow architecture
Resolution Modes (for v2):
RESOLUTION_MODES = {
"tiny": {"base_size": 512, "image_size": 512, "crop_mode": False},
"small": {"base_size": 640, "image_size": 640, "crop_mode": False},
"base": {"base_size": 1024, "image_size": 768, "crop_mode": False}, # v2 optimized
"large": {"base_size": 1280, "image_size": 1024, "crop_mode": False},
"gundam": {"base_size": 1024, "image_size": 768, "crop_mode": True}, # v2 optimized
}
Other OCR Scripts
Nanonets OCR (nanonets-ocr.py, nanonets-ocr2.py)
✅ Both versions working
PaddleOCR-VL (paddleocr-vl.py)
✅ Working
Future: OCR Smoke Test Dataset
Status: Idea (noted 2026-02-12)
Build a small curated dataset (uv-scripts/ocr-smoke-test?) with ~2-5 samples from diverse sources. Purpose: fast CI-style verification that scripts still work after dep updates, without downloading full datasets.
Design goals:
- Tiny (~20-30 images total) so download is seconds not minutes
- Covers the axes that break things: document type, image quality, language, layout complexity
- Has ground truth text where possible for quality regression checks
- All permissively licensed (CC0/CC-BY preferred)
Candidate sources:
| Source | What it covers | Why |
|---|---|---|
NationalLibraryOfScotland/medical-history-of-british-india |
Historical English, degraded scans | Has hand-corrected text column for comparison. CC0. Already tested with GLM-OCR. |
davanstrien/ufo-ColPali |
Mixed modern documents | Already used as our go-to test set. Varied layouts. |
| Something with tables | Structured data extraction | Tests --task table modes. Maybe a financial report or census page. |
| Something with formulas/LaTeX | Math notation | Tests --task formula. arXiv pages or textbook scans. |
| Something multilingual (CJK, Arabic, etc.) | Non-Latin scripts | GLM-OCR claims zh/ja/ko support. Good to verify. |
| Something handwritten | Handwriting recognition | Edge case that reveals model limits. |
How it would work:
# Quick smoke test for any script
uv run glm-ocr.py uv-scripts/ocr-smoke-test smoke-out --max-samples 5
# Or a dedicated test runner that checks all scripts against it
Open questions:
- Build as a proper HF dataset, or just a folder of images in the repo?
- Should we include expected output for regression testing (fragile if models change)?
- Could we add a
--smoke-testflag to each script that auto-uses this dataset? - Worth adding to HF Jobs scheduled runs for ongoing monitoring?
Last Updated: 2026-02-12 Watch PRs:
- DeepSeek-OCR-2: https://github.com/vllm-project/vllm/pull/33165