How do I install the Hf Mem skill?

Run npx skillmds@latest add huggingface/hf-mem-2 in your terminal (requires Node.js), paste this page's agent-chat prompt into Claude, Cursor, or any MCP-connected agent, or download the SKILL.md file and copy it into your agent's skills directory.

Is Hf Mem safe to use?

This skill has not completed SkillMD's automated safety review yet. Independent scanners report: SkillSpector: PASS, Skill Scanner: PASS. SkillMD never runs a skill's scripts for you; review the SKILL.md before installing.

Which AI agents work with Hf Mem?

This skill is tagged as working with Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex. SKILL.md is an open format, so most agents that read a skills directory can load it too.

Is Hf Mem free to use?

Yes. Installing skills from SkillMD is free, and the skill stays under its author's original license.

Who published Hf Mem?

Hugging Face (@huggingface) published this skill. Their other Agent Skills are listed on their SkillMD profile.

Hf Mem by huggingface — Agent Skill

Name: Hf Mem
Author: Hugging Face

File contents

hf_mem estimates the required memory for inference, including model weights and an optional KV cache, for Safetensors and GGUF for models on the Hugging Face Hub using HTTP Range requests i.e., without downloading or loading any weights locally.

When to use?

User asks how much VRAM or memory a model needs to run
User wants to know if a model fits on their GPU or a given instance
User references a Hugging Face model ID or URL and asks about inference requirements

What are the requirements?

uv installed (for uvx)
HF_TOKEN env var or --hf-token flag (for gated or private models only)

How to run?

Run with --model-id pointing to the Hugging Face Hub repository which will check that it either contains Safetensors (via model.safetensors, model.safetensors.index.json if sharded, or model_index.json for Diffusers) or GGUF model weights within.

uvx hf-mem --model-id <model-id> --json-output

If the repository contains GGUF model weights in multiple precisions / quantizations, the estimations will be on a per-file basis, whereas for inference you won't load all of those but rather only a single precision. This being said, for GGUF you might as well need to provide --gguf-file to target the specific file (or path if sharded) you want to run.

uvx hf-mem --model-id <model-id> --gguf-file <file-or-path> --json-output

Additionally, hf-mem comes with an --experimental flag that will also calculate the KV cache memory requirements too, useful for large-language models, meaning it applies to LLMs (...ForCausalLM), VLMs (...ForConditionalGeneration), and GGUF models.

As per the context window, it will be read from the default or overridden with --max-model-len a la vLLM. And, same goes for the KV cache precision, which will default to the model precision unless manually set via --kv-cache-dtype a la vLLM too.

For Safetensors use as:

uvx hf-mem --model-id <model-id> --experimental [--max-model-len N] [--batch-size N] [--kv-cache-dtype auto|bfloat16|fp8|fp8_ds_mla|fp8_e4m3|fp8_e5m2|fp8_inc] --json-output

And, for GGUF use as:

uvx hf-mem --model-id <model-id> --gguf-file <file-or-path> --experimental [--max-model-len N] [--batch-size N] [--kv-cache-dtype auto|F32|F16|Q4_0|Q4_1|Q5_0|Q5_1|Q8_0|Q8_1|Q2_K|Q3_K|Q4_K|Q5_K|Q6_K|Q8_K|IQ2_XXS|IQ2_XS|IQ3_XXS|IQ1_S|IQ4_NL|IQ3_S|IQ2_S|IQ4_XS|I8|I16|I32|I64|F64|IQ1_M|BF16|TQ1_0|TQ2_0|MXFP4] --json-output

Examples

For Transformers with Safetensors weights:

uvx hf-mem --model-id MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-M2 --json-output

For Diffusers with Safetensors weights:

uvx hf-mem --model-id Qwen/Qwen-Image --json-output

For Sentence Transformers with Safetensors weights:

uvx hf-mem --model-id google/embeddinggemma-300m --json-output

With --experimental to include the KV cache estimation for LLMs and VLMs:

uvx hf-mem --model-id mistralai/Mistral-7B-v0.1 --experimental --json-output

And, for LLMs or VLMs with GGUF weights:

uvx hf-mem --model-id unsloth/Qwen3.5-397B-A17B-GGUF --gguf-file Q4_K_M --experimental --json-output

---name: hf-mem-2description: Hugging Face CLI to estimate the required memory to load Safetensors or GGUF model weights for inference from the Hugging Face Hub---`hf_mem` estimates the required memory for inference, including model weights and an optional KV cache, for Safetensors and GGUF for models on the Hugging Face Hub using HTTP Range requests i.e., without downloading or loading any weights locally.## When to use?- User asks how much VRAM or memory a model needs to run- User wants to know if a model fits on their GPU or a given instance- User references a Hugging Face model ID or URL and asks about inference requirements## What are the requirements?- `uv` installed (for `uvx`)- `HF_TOKEN` env var or `--hf-token` flag (for gated or private models only)## How to run?Run with `--model-id` pointing to the Hugging Face Hub repository which will check that it either contains Safetensors (via `model.safetensors`, `model.safetensors.index.json` if sharded, or `model_index.json` for Diffusers) or GGUF model weights within.```bashuvx hf-mem --model-id <model-id> --json-output```If the repository contains GGUF model weights in multiple precisions / quantizations, the estimations will be on a per-file basis, whereas for inference you won't load all of those but rather only a single precision. This being said, for GGUF you might as well need to provide `--gguf-file` to target the specific file (or path if sharded) you want to run.```bashuvx hf-mem --model-id <model-id> --gguf-file <file-or-path> --json-output```Additionally, `hf-mem` comes with an `--experimental` flag that will also calculate the KV cache memory requirements too, useful for large-language models, meaning it applies to LLMs (`...ForCausalLM`), VLMs (`...ForConditionalGeneration`), and GGUF models.As per the context window, it will be read from the default or overridden with `--max-model-len` a la vLLM. And, same goes for the KV cache precision, which will default to the model precision unless manually set via `--kv-cache-dtype` a la vLLM too.For Safetensors use as:```bashuvx hf-mem --model-id <model-id> --experimental [--max-model-len N] [--batch-size N] [--kv-cache-dtype auto|bfloat16|fp8|fp8_ds_mla|fp8_e4m3|fp8_e5m2|fp8_inc] --json-output```And, for GGUF use as:```bashuvx hf-mem --model-id <model-id> --gguf-file <file-or-path> --experimental [--max-model-len N] [--batch-size N] [--kv-cache-dtype auto|F32|F16|Q4_0|Q4_1|Q5_0|Q5_1|Q8_0|Q8_1|Q2_K|Q3_K|Q4_K|Q5_K|Q6_K|Q8_K|IQ2_XXS|IQ2_XS|IQ3_XXS|IQ1_S|IQ4_NL|IQ3_S|IQ2_S|IQ4_XS|I8|I16|I32|I64|F64|IQ1_M|BF16|TQ1_0|TQ2_0|MXFP4] --json-output```## ExamplesFor Transformers with Safetensors weights:```bashuvx hf-mem --model-id MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-M2 --json-output```For Diffusers with Safetensors weights:```bashuvx hf-mem --model-id Qwen/Qwen-Image --json-output```For Sentence Transformers with Safetensors weights:```bashuvx hf-mem --model-id google/embeddinggemma-300m --json-output```With `--experimental` to include the KV cache estimation for LLMs and VLMs:```bashuvx hf-mem --model-id mistralai/Mistral-7B-v0.1 --experimental --json-output```And, for LLMs or VLMs with GGUF weights:```bashuvx hf-mem --model-id unsloth/Qwen3.5-397B-A17B-GGUF --gguf-file Q4_K_M --experimental --json-output```

Frequently asked questions

Hf Mem