Model sharing and uploading¶

In this page, we will show you how to share a model you have trained or fine-tuned on new data with the community on the model hub.

Note

You will need to create an account on huggingface.co for this.

Optionally, you can join an existing organization or create a new one.

Prepare your model for uploading¶

We have seen in the training tutorial: how to fine-tune a model on a given task. You have probably done something similar on your task, either using the model directly in your own training loop or using the Trainer/TFTrainer class. Let’s see how you can share the result on the model hub.

Model versioning¶

Since version v3.5.0, the model hub has built-in model versioning based on git and git-lfs. It is based on the paradigm that one model is one repo.

This allows:

built-in versioning
access control
scalability

This is built around revisions, which is a way to pin a specific version of a model, using a commit hash, tag or branch.

For instance:

>>> model = AutoModel.from_pretrained(
>>>   "julien-c/EsperBERTo-small",
>>>   revision="v2.0.1" # tag name, or branch name, or commit hash
>>> )

Basic steps¶

In order to upload a model, you’ll need to first create a git repo. This repo will live on the model hub, allowing users to clone it and you (and your organization members) to push to it.

You can create a model repo directly from the website, here <https://huggingface.co/new>.

Alternatively, you can use the transformers-cli. The next steps describe that process:

Go to a terminal and run the following command. It should be in the virtual environment where you installed 🤗 Transformers, since that command transformers-cli comes from the library.

transformers-cli login

Once you are logged in with your model hub credentials, you can start building your repositories. To create a repo:

transformers-cli repo create your-model-name

This creates a repo on the model hub, which can be cloned.

git clone https://huggingface.co/username/your-model-name

# Make sure you have git-lfs installed
# (https://git-lfs.github.com/)
git lfs install

When you have your local clone of your repo and lfs installed, you can then add/remove from that clone as you would with any other git repo.

# Commit as usual
cd your-model-name
echo "hello" >> README.md
git add . && git commit -m "Update from $USER"

We are intentionally not wrapping git too much, so as to stay intuitive and easy-to-use.

Make your model work on all frameworks¶

You probably have your favorite framework, but so will other users! That’s why it’s best to upload your model with both PyTorch and TensorFlow checkpoints to make it easier to use (if you skip this step, users will still be able to load your model in another framework, but it will be slower, as it will have to be converted on the fly). Don’t worry, it’s super easy to do (and in a future version, it will all be automatic). You will need to install both PyTorch and TensorFlow for this step, but you don’t need to worry about the GPU, so it should be very easy. Check the TensorFlow installation page and/or the PyTorch installation page to see how.

First check that your model class exists in the other framework, that is try to import the same model by either adding or removing TF. For instance, if you trained a DistilBertForSequenceClassification, try to type

>>> from transformers import TFDistilBertForSequenceClassification

and if you trained a TFDistilBertForSequenceClassification, try to type

>>> from transformers import DistilBertForSequenceClassification

This will give back an error if your model does not exist in the other framework (something that should be pretty rare since we’re aiming for full parity between the two frameworks). In this case, skip this and go to the next step.

Now, if you trained your model in PyTorch and have to create a TensorFlow version, adapt the following code to your model class:

>>> tf_model = TFDistilBertForSequenceClassification.from_pretrained("path/to/awesome-name-you-picked", from_pt=True)
>>> tf_model.save_pretrained("path/to/awesome-name-you-picked")

and if you trained your model in TensorFlow and have to create a PyTorch version, adapt the following code to your model class:

>>> pt_model = DistilBertForSequenceClassification.from_pretrained("path/to/awesome-name-you-picked", from_tf=True)
>>> pt_model.save_pretrained("path/to/awesome-name-you-picked")

That’s all there is to it!

Check the directory before pushing to the model hub.¶

Make sure there are no garbage files in the directory you’ll upload. It should only have:

a config.json file, which saves the configuration of your model ;
a pytorch_model.bin file, which is the PyTorch checkpoint (unless you can’t have it for some reason) ;
a tf_model.h5 file, which is the TensorFlow checkpoint (unless you can’t have it for some reason) ;
a special_tokens_map.json, which is part of your tokenizer save;
a tokenizer_config.json, which is part of your tokenizer save;
files named vocab.json, vocab.txt, merges.txt, or similar, which contain the vocabulary of your tokenizer, part of your tokenizer save;
maybe a added_tokens.json, which is part of your tokenizer save.

Other files can safely be deleted.

Uploading your files¶

Once the repo is cloned, you can add the model, configuration and tokenizer files. For instance, saving the model and tokenizer files:

>>> model.save_pretrained("path/to/repo/clone/your-model-name")
>>> tokenizer.save_pretrained("path/to/repo/clone/your-model-name")

Or, if you’re using the Trainer API

>>> trainer.save_model("path/to/awesome-name-you-picked")
>>> tokenizer.save_pretrained("path/to/repo/clone/your-model-name")

You can then add these files to the staging environment and verify that they have been correctly staged with the git status command:

git add --all
git status

Finally, the files should be comitted:

git commit -m "First version of the your-model-name model and tokenizer."

And pushed to the remote:

git push

This will upload the folder containing the weights, tokenizer and configuration we have just prepared.

Add a model card¶

To make sure everyone knows what your model can do, what its limitations and potential bias or ethetical considerations, please add a README.md model card to the 🤗 Transformers repo under model_cards/. It should then be placed in a subfolder with your username or organization, then another subfolder named like your model (awesome-name-you-picked). Or just click on the “Create a model card on GitHub” button on the model page, it will get you directly to the right location. If you need one, here is a model card template (meta-suggestions are welcome).

If your model is fine-tuned from another model coming from the model hub (all 🤗 Transformers pretrained models do), don’t forget to link to its model card so that people can fully trace how your model was built.

If you have never made a pull request to the 🤗 Transformers repo, look at the contributing guide to see the steps to follow.

Note

You can also send your model card in the folder you uploaded with the CLI by placing it in a README.md file inside path/to/awesome-name-you-picked/.

Using your model¶

Your model now has a page on huggingface.co/models 🔥

Anyone can load it from code:

>>> tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained("namespace/awesome-name-you-picked")
>>> model = AutoModel.from_pretrained("namespace/awesome-name-you-picked")

You may specify a revision by using the revision flag in the from_pretrained method:

>>> tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(
>>>   "julien-c/EsperBERTo-small",
>>>   revision="v2.0.1" # tag name, or branch name, or commit hash
>>> )

Workflow in a Colab notebook¶

If you’re in a Colab notebook (or similar) with no direct access to a terminal, here is the workflow you can use to upload your model. You can execute each one of them in a cell by adding a ! at the beginning.

First you need to install git-lfs in the environment used by the notebook:

sudo apt-get install git-lfs

Then you can use the transformers-cli to create your new repo:

transformers-cli login
transformers-cli repo create your-model-name

Once it’s created, you can clone it and configure it (replace username by your username on huggingface.co):

git clone https://username:password@huggingface.co/username/your-model-name
# Alternatively if you have a token,
# you can use it instead of your password
git clone https://username:token@huggingface.co/username/your-model-name

cd your-model-name
git lfs install
git config --global user.email "email@example.com"
# Tip: using the same email than for your huggingface.co account will link your commits to your profile
git config --global user.name "Your name"

Once you’ve saved your model inside, and your clone is setup with the right remote URL, you can add it and push it with usual git commands.

git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit"
git push