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Transformers JS

Hugging FaceOfficialCreated by huggingfaceDistributed by Hugging Face

  • Skill
  • Tool integration
  • Data and AI
  • Apache-2.0
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From the author

Use Transformers.js to run state-of-the-art machine learning models directly in JavaScript/TypeScript. Supports NLP (text classification, translation, summarization), computer vision (image classification, object detection), audio (speech recognition, audio classification), and multimodal tasks. Works in browsers and server-side runtimes (Node.js, Bun, Deno) with WebGPU/WASM using pre-trained models from Hugging Face Hub.
— the description by huggingface

AutoGineer summary

Written by AutoGineer from the skill’s own files, not by the author

Transformers.js is a library that enables the execution of machine learning models within JavaScript and TypeScript environments, including web browsers and server-side runtimes like Node.js, Bun, and Deno. It leverages WebGPU and WASM to run models locally, eliminating the need for a dedicated Python backend. The library provides a pipeline API for common tasks such as NLP, computer vision, audio processing, and multimodal applications, with support for models hosted on the Hugging Face Hub.

What it does

  • Provides a pipeline API for common machine learning tasks
  • Supports NLP, computer vision, audio, and multimodal model execution
  • Enables local model inference in browsers and server-side runtimes
  • Integrates with the Hugging Face Hub for model discovery and loading
  • Offers configuration for caching, quantization, and device selection
  • Includes tools for standalone tokenization and tensor manipulation

When to use it

  • When you need to run ML models client-side in a browser
  • When you want to avoid maintaining a separate Python backend for ML
  • When building applications in Node.js, Bun, or Deno that require AI capabilities
  • When you need to perform text, image, or audio analysis locally

Advantages

  • Runs directly in JavaScript/TypeScript environments
  • Supports both browser and server-side execution
  • Reduces infrastructure requirements by removing the need for a Python server
  • Provides flexible caching options for different environments
  • Allows for model quantization to manage memory and storage

Usage examples

“How do I run a sentiment analysis model in my browser?”
Use the pipeline API: const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis'); const result = await pipe('I love transformers!');
“How can I load a specific model from Hugging Face?”
Pass the model ID as the second argument to the pipeline: const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', 'Xenova/bert-base-multilingual-uncased-sentiment');
“How do I enable GPU acceleration for my model?”
Set the device option in the pipeline: const pipe = await pipeline('task', 'model-id', { device: 'webgpu' });
“How do I free up memory after using a model?”
Call the dispose method on the pipeline instance: await pipe.dispose();

Install

  1. Download the skill as a ZIP:

    https://mp-staging.autogineer.com/agent-skills/huggingface/transformers-js/download
  2. Unzip it into the cross-client skills folder of your project:

    mkdir -p .agents/skills && unzip transformers-js.zip -d .agents/skills

Documentation by huggingface

Transformers.js - Machine Learning for JavaScript

Transformers.js enables running state-of-the-art machine learning models directly in JavaScript across browsers and server-side runtimes (Node.js, Bun, Deno), with no Python server required.

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when you need to:

  • Run ML models for text analysis, generation, or translation in JavaScript

  • Perform image classification, object detection, or segmentation

  • Implement speech recognition or audio processing

  • Build multimodal AI applications (text-to-image, image-to-text, etc.)

  • Run models client-side in the browser without a backend

Installation

NPM Installation
npm install @huggingface/transformers
Browser Usage (CDN)
<script type="module">
  import { pipeline } from 'https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@huggingface/transformers';
</script>

Core Concepts

1. Pipeline API

The pipeline API is the easiest way to use models. It groups together preprocessing, model inference, and postprocessing:

import { pipeline } from '@huggingface/transformers';

// Create a pipeline for a specific task
const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis');

// Use the pipeline
const result = await pipe('I love transformers!');
// Output: [{ label: 'POSITIVE', score: 0.999817686 }]

// IMPORTANT: Always dispose when done to free memory
await pipe.dispose();

⚠️ Memory Management: All pipelines must be disposed with pipe.dispose() when finished to prevent memory leaks. See examples in Code Examples for cleanup patterns across different environments.

2. Model Selection

You can specify a custom model as the second argument:

const pipe = await pipeline(
  'sentiment-analysis',
  'Xenova/bert-base-multilingual-uncased-sentiment'
);

Finding Models:

Browse available Transformers.js models on Hugging Face Hub:

Tip: Filter by task type, sort by trending/downloads, and check model cards for performance metrics and usage examples.

3. Device Selection

Choose where to run the model:

// Run on CPU (default for WASM)
const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', 'model-id');

// Run on GPU (WebGPU)
const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', 'model-id', {
  device: 'webgpu',
});
4. Quantization Options

Control model precision vs. performance:

// Use quantized model (faster, smaller)
const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', 'model-id', {
  dtype: 'q4',  // Options: 'fp32', 'fp16', 'q8', 'q4'
});

Supported Tasks

Note: All examples below show basic usage.

Natural Language Processing
Text Classification
const classifier = await pipeline('text-classification');
const result = await classifier('This movie was amazing!');
Named Entity Recognition (NER)
const ner = await pipeline('token-classification');
const entities = await ner('My name is John and I live in New York.');
Question Answering
const qa = await pipeline('question-answering');
const answer = await qa({
  question: 'What is the capital of France?',
  context: 'Paris is the capital and largest city of France.'
});
Text Generation
const generator = await pipeline('text-generation', 'onnx-community/gemma-3-270m-it-ONNX');
const text = await generator('Once upon a time', {
  max_new_tokens: 100,
  temperature: 0.7
});

For streaming and chat: See Text Generation Guide for:

  • Streaming token-by-token output with TextStreamer

  • Chat/conversation format with system/user/assistant roles

  • Generation parameters (temperature, top_k, top_p)

  • Browser and Node.js examples

  • React components and API endpoints

Translation
const translator = await pipeline('translation', 'Xenova/nllb-200-distilled-600M');
const output = await translator('Hello, how are you?', {
  src_lang: 'eng_Latn',
  tgt_lang: 'fra_Latn'
});
Summarization
const summarizer = await pipeline('summarization');
const summary = await summarizer(longText, {
  max_length: 100,
  min_length: 30
});
Zero-Shot Classification
const classifier = await pipeline('zero-shot-classification');
const result = await classifier('This is a story about sports.', ['politics', 'sports', 'technology']);
Computer Vision
Image Classification
const classifier = await pipeline('image-classification');
const result = await classifier('https://example.com/image.jpg');
// Or with local file
const result = await classifier(imageUrl);
Object Detection
const detector = await pipeline('object-detection');
const objects = await detector('https://example.com/image.jpg');
// Returns: [{ label: 'person', score: 0.95, box: { xmin, ymin, xmax, ymax } }, ...]
Image Segmentation
const segmenter = await pipeline('image-segmentation');
const segments = await segmenter('https://example.com/image.jpg');
Depth Estimation
const depthEstimator = await pipeline('depth-estimation');
const depth = await depthEstimator('https://example.com/image.jpg');
Zero-Shot Image Classification
const classifier = await pipeline('zero-shot-image-classification');
const result = await classifier('image.jpg', ['cat', 'dog', 'bird']);
Audio Processing
Automatic Speech Recognition
const transcriber = await pipeline('automatic-speech-recognition');
const result = await transcriber('audio.wav');
// Returns: { text: 'transcribed text here' }
Audio Classification
const classifier = await pipeline('audio-classification');
const result = await classifier('audio.wav');
Text-to-Speech
const synthesizer = await pipeline('text-to-speech', 'Xenova/speecht5_tts');
const audio = await synthesizer('Hello, this is a test.', {
  speaker_embeddings: speakerEmbeddings
});
Multimodal
Image-to-Text (Image Captioning)
const captioner = await pipeline('image-to-text');
const caption = await captioner('image.jpg');
Document Question Answering
const docQA = await pipeline('document-question-answering');
const answer = await docQA('document-image.jpg', 'What is the total amount?');
Zero-Shot Object Detection
const detector = await pipeline('zero-shot-object-detection');
const objects = await detector('image.jpg', ['person', 'car', 'tree']);
Feature Extraction (Embeddings)
const extractor = await pipeline('feature-extraction');
const embeddings = await extractor('This is a sentence to embed.');
// Returns: tensor of shape [1, sequence_length, hidden_size]

// For sentence embeddings (mean pooling)
const extractor = await pipeline('feature-extraction', 'onnx-community/all-MiniLM-L6-v2-ONNX');
const embeddings = await extractor('Text to embed', { pooling: 'mean', normalize: true });

Finding and Choosing Models

Browsing the Hugging Face Hub

Discover compatible Transformers.js models on Hugging Face Hub:

Base URL (all models):

https://huggingface.co/models?library=transformers.js&sort=trending

Filter by task using the pipeline_tag parameter:

TaskURL
Text Generationhttps://huggingface.co/models?pipeline_tag=text-generation&library=transformers.js&sort=trending
Text Classificationhttps://huggingface.co/models?pipeline_tag=text-classification&library=transformers.js&sort=trending
Translationhttps://huggingface.co/models?pipeline_tag=translation&library=transformers.js&sort=trending
Summarizationhttps://huggingface.co/models?pipeline_tag=summarization&library=transformers.js&sort=trending
Question Answeringhttps://huggingface.co/models?pipeline_tag=question-answering&library=transformers.js&sort=trending
Image Classificationhttps://huggingface.co/models?pipeline_tag=image-classification&library=transformers.js&sort=trending
Object Detectionhttps://huggingface.co/models?pipeline_tag=object-detection&library=transformers.js&sort=trending
Image Segmentationhttps://huggingface.co/models?pipeline_tag=image-segmentation&library=transformers.js&sort=trending
Speech Recognitionhttps://huggingface.co/models?pipeline_tag=automatic-speech-recognition&library=transformers.js&sort=trending
Audio Classificationhttps://huggingface.co/models?pipeline_tag=audio-classification&library=transformers.js&sort=trending
Image-to-Texthttps://huggingface.co/models?pipeline_tag=image-to-text&library=transformers.js&sort=trending
Feature Extractionhttps://huggingface.co/models?pipeline_tag=feature-extraction&library=transformers.js&sort=trending
Zero-Shot Classificationhttps://huggingface.co/models?pipeline_tag=zero-shot-classification&library=transformers.js&sort=trending

Sort options:

  • &sort=trending - Most popular recently

  • &sort=downloads - Most downloaded overall

  • &sort=likes - Most liked by community

  • &sort=modified - Recently updated

Choosing the Right Model

Consider these factors when selecting a model:

1. Model Size

  • Small (< 100MB): Fast, suitable for browsers, limited accuracy

  • Medium (100MB - 500MB): Balanced performance, good for most use cases

  • Large (> 500MB): High accuracy, slower, better for Node.js or powerful devices

2. Quantization Models are often available in different quantization levels:

  • fp32 - Full precision (largest, most accurate)

  • fp16 - Half precision (smaller, still accurate)

  • q8 - 8-bit quantized (much smaller, slight accuracy loss)

  • q4 - 4-bit quantized (smallest, noticeable accuracy loss)

3. Task Compatibility Check the model card for:

  • Supported tasks (some models support multiple tasks)

  • Input/output formats

  • Language support (multilingual vs. English-only)

  • License restrictions

4. Performance Metrics Model cards typically show:

  • Accuracy scores

  • Benchmark results

  • Inference speed

  • Memory requirements

Example: Finding a Text Generation Model
// 1. Visit: https://huggingface.co/models?pipeline_tag=text-generation&library=transformers.js&sort=trending

// 2. Browse and select a model (e.g., onnx-community/gemma-3-270m-it-ONNX)

// 3. Check model card for:
//    - Model size: ~270M parameters
//    - Quantization: q4 available
//    - Language: English
//    - Use case: Instruction-following chat

// 4. Use the model:
import { pipeline } from '@huggingface/transformers';

const generator = await pipeline(
  'text-generation',
  'onnx-community/gemma-3-270m-it-ONNX',
  { dtype: 'q4' } // Use quantized version for faster inference
);

const output = await generator('Explain quantum computing in simple terms.', {
  max_new_tokens: 100
});

await generator.dispose();
Tips for Model Selection
  1. Start Small: Test with a smaller model first, then upgrade if needed

  2. Check ONNX Support: Ensure the model has ONNX files (look for onnx folder in model repo)

  3. Read Model Cards: Model cards contain usage examples, limitations, and benchmarks

  4. Test Locally: Benchmark inference speed and memory usage in your environment

  5. Filter by Library: Use library=transformers.js to find compatible models: https://huggingface.co/models?library=transformers.js

  6. Version Pin: Use specific git commits in production for stability:

    const pipe = await pipeline('task', 'model-id', { revision: 'abc123' });

Advanced Configuration

Environment Configuration (env)

The env object provides comprehensive control over Transformers.js execution, caching, and model loading.

Quick Overview:

import { env, LogLevel } from '@huggingface/transformers';

// View version
console.log(env.version); // e.g., '4.x'

// Common settings
env.allowRemoteModels = true;  // Load from Hugging Face Hub
env.allowLocalModels = false;  // Load from file system
env.localModelPath = '/models/'; // Local model directory
env.useFSCache = true;         // Cache models on disk (Node.js)
env.useBrowserCache = true;    // Cache models in browser
env.cacheDir = './.cache';     // Cache directory location
// Optional: override logging level (default is LogLevel.WARNING)
env.logLevel = LogLevel.INFO;

// Optional: custom fetch for auth headers, retries, abort signals, etc.
env.fetch = (url, options) =>
  fetch(url, {
    ...options,
    headers: {
      ...options?.headers,
      Authorization: `Bearer ${HF_TOKEN}`,
    },
  });

Configuration Patterns:

// Development: Fast iteration with remote models
env.allowRemoteModels = true;
env.useFSCache = true;

// Production: Local models only
env.allowRemoteModels = false;
env.allowLocalModels = true;
env.localModelPath = '/app/models/';

// Custom CDN
env.remoteHost = 'https://cdn.example.com/models';

// Disable caching (testing)
env.useFSCache = false;
env.useBrowserCache = false;

For complete documentation on all configuration options, caching strategies, cache management, pre-downloading models, and more, see:

→ Configuration Reference

ModelRegistry (v4)

ModelRegistry gives you visibility and control over model assets before loading a pipeline. Use it to estimate download size, check cache status, inspect available dtypes, and clear cached artifacts for a specific task/model/options tuple.

import { ModelRegistry } from '@huggingface/transformers';

const task = 'feature-extraction';
const modelId = 'onnx-community/all-MiniLM-L6-v2-ONNX';
const modelOptions = { dtype: 'fp32' };

// List required files for this pipeline
const files = await ModelRegistry.get_pipeline_files(task, modelId, modelOptions);

// Check if assets are already cached
const cached = await ModelRegistry.is_pipeline_cached(task, modelId, modelOptions);

// Inspect precision formats available for this model
const dtypes = await ModelRegistry.get_available_dtypes(modelId);

console.log({ files: files.length, cached, dtypes });

For production patterns and full API coverage, see ModelRegistry Reference.

Standalone Tokenization (@huggingface/tokenizers)

For tokenization-only workflows, use @huggingface/tokenizers. It is a separate lightweight package useful when you need fast tokenization/encoding without loading full model inference pipelines.

npm install @huggingface/tokenizers
import { Tokenizer } from '@huggingface/tokenizers';
Working with Tensors
import { AutoTokenizer, AutoModel } from '@huggingface/transformers';

// Load tokenizer and model separately for more control
const tokenizer = await AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained('bert-base-uncased');
const model = await AutoModel.from_pretrained('bert-base-uncased');

// Tokenize input
const inputs = await tokenizer('Hello world!');

// Run model
const outputs = await model(inputs);
Batch Processing
const classifier = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis');

// Process multiple texts
const results = await classifier([
  'I love this!',
  'This is terrible.',
  'It was okay.'
]);

Runtime-Specific Considerations

WebGPU Usage

WebGPU provides GPU acceleration in browsers and server-side runtimes (when supported):

const pipe = await pipeline('text-generation', 'onnx-community/gemma-3-270m-it-ONNX', {
  device: 'webgpu',
  dtype: 'fp32'
});

Note: Use webgpu when available and fall back to WASM/CPU when not supported in the current runtime.

WASM Performance

WASM is the most compatible execution backend across runtimes:

// Optimized for browsers with quantization
const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', 'model-id', {
  dtype: 'q8'  // or 'q4' for even smaller size
});
Progress Tracking & Loading Indicators

Models can be large (ranging from a few MB to several GB) and consist of multiple files. Track download progress by passing a callback to the pipeline() function:

import { pipeline } from '@huggingface/transformers';

// Track progress for each file
const fileProgress = {};

function onProgress(info) {
  if (info.status === 'progress_total') {
    console.log(`Total: ${info.progress.toFixed(1)}%`);
    return;
  }

  console.log(`${info.status}: ${info.file ?? ''}`);
  
  if (info.status === 'progress') {
    fileProgress[info.file] = info.progress;
    console.log(`${info.file}: ${info.progress.toFixed(1)}%`);
  }
  
  if (info.status === 'done') {
    console.log(`✓ ${info.file} complete`);
  }
}

// Pass callback to pipeline
const classifier = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', null, {
  progress_callback: onProgress
});

Progress Info Properties:

interface ProgressInfo {
  status: 'initiate' | 'download' | 'progress' | 'progress_total' | 'done' | 'ready';
  name: string;      // Model id or path
  file?: string;     // File being processed (per-file events)
  progress?: number; // Percentage (0-100, for 'progress' and 'progress_total')
  loaded?: number;   // Bytes downloaded (only for 'progress' status)
  total?: number;    // Total bytes (only for 'progress' status)
}

For complete examples including browser UIs, React components, CLI progress bars, and retry logic, see:

→ Pipeline Options - Progress Callback

Error Handling

try {
  const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', 'model-id');
  const result = await pipe('text to analyze');
} catch (error) {
  if (error.message.includes('fetch')) {
    console.error('Model download failed. Check internet connection.');
  } else if (error.message.includes('ONNX')) {
    console.error('Model execution failed. Check model compatibility.');
  } else {
    console.error('Unknown error:', error);
  }
}

Performance Tips

  1. Reuse Pipelines: Create pipeline once, reuse for multiple inferences

  2. Use Quantization: Start with q8 or q4 for faster inference

  3. Batch Processing: Process multiple inputs together when possible

  4. Cache Models: Models are cached automatically (see Caching Reference for details on browser Cache API, Node.js filesystem cache, and custom implementations)

  5. WebGPU for Large Models: Use WebGPU for models that benefit from GPU acceleration

  6. Prune Context: For text generation, limit max_new_tokens to avoid memory issues

  7. Clean Up Resources: Call pipe.dispose() when done to free memory

Memory Management

IMPORTANT: Always call pipe.dispose() when finished to prevent memory leaks.

const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis');
const result = await pipe('Great product!');
await pipe.dispose();  // ✓ Free memory (100MB - several GB per model)

When to dispose:

  • Application shutdown or component unmount

  • Before loading a different model

  • After batch processing in long-running apps

Models consume significant memory and hold GPU/CPU resources. Disposal is critical for browser memory limits and server stability.

For detailed patterns (React cleanup, servers, browser), see Code Examples

Troubleshooting

Model Not Found
  • Verify model exists on Hugging Face Hub

  • Check model name spelling

  • Ensure model has ONNX files (look for onnx folder in model repo)

Memory Issues
  • Use smaller models or quantized versions (dtype: 'q4')

  • Reduce batch size

  • Limit sequence length with max_length

WebGPU Errors
  • Check browser compatibility (Chrome 113+, Edge 113+)

  • Try dtype: 'fp16' if fp32 fails

  • Fall back to WASM if WebGPU unavailable

Reference Documentation

This Skill
Official Transformers.js

Best Practices

  1. Always Dispose Pipelines: Call pipe.dispose() when done - critical for preventing memory leaks

  2. Start with Pipelines: Use the pipeline API unless you need fine-grained control

  3. Test Locally First: Test models with small inputs before deploying

  4. Monitor Model Sizes: Be aware of model download sizes for web applications

  5. Handle Loading States: Show progress indicators for better UX

  6. Version Pin: Pin specific model versions for production stability

  7. Error Boundaries: Always wrap pipeline calls in try-catch blocks

  8. Progressive Enhancement: Provide fallbacks for unsupported browsers

  9. Reuse Models: Load once, use many times - don't recreate pipelines unnecessarily

  10. Graceful Shutdown: Dispose models on SIGTERM/SIGINT in servers

Quick Reference: Task IDs

TaskTask ID
Text classificationtext-classification or sentiment-analysis
Token classificationtoken-classification or ner
Question answeringquestion-answering
Fill maskfill-mask
Summarizationsummarization
Translationtranslation
Text generationtext-generation
Text-to-text generationtext2text-generation
Zero-shot classificationzero-shot-classification
Image classificationimage-classification
Image segmentationimage-segmentation
Object detectionobject-detection
Depth estimationdepth-estimation
Image-to-imageimage-to-image
Zero-shot image classificationzero-shot-image-classification
Zero-shot object detectionzero-shot-object-detection
Automatic speech recognitionautomatic-speech-recognition
Audio classificationaudio-classification
Text-to-speechtext-to-speech or text-to-audio
Image-to-textimage-to-text
Document question answeringdocument-question-answering
Feature extractionfeature-extraction
Sentence similaritysentence-similarity

This skill enables you to integrate state-of-the-art machine learning capabilities directly into JavaScript applications without requiring separate ML servers or Python environments.

Files

references/PIPELINE_OPTIONS.md

Pipeline Options Reference

Guide to configuring model loading and inference using the PretrainedModelOptions parameter in the pipeline() function.

Table of Contents

  1. Overview

  2. Basic Options

  3. Model Loading Options

  4. Device and Performance Options

  5. Common Configuration Patterns

Overview

The pipeline() function accepts three parameters:

import { pipeline } from '@huggingface/transformers';

const pipe = await pipeline(
  'task-name',           // 1. Task type (e.g., 'sentiment-analysis')
  'model-id',            // 2. Model identifier (optional, uses default if null)
  options                // 3. PretrainedModelOptions (optional)
);

The third parameter, options, allows you to configure how the model is loaded and executed.

Available Options
interface PretrainedModelOptions {
  // Progress tracking
  progress_callback?: (info: ProgressInfo) => void;
  
  // Model configuration
  config?: PretrainedConfig;
  
  // Cache and loading
  cache_dir?: string;
  local_files_only?: boolean;
  revision?: string;
  
  // Model-specific settings
  subfolder?: string;
  model_file_name?: string;
  
  // Device and performance
  device?: DeviceType | Record<string, DeviceType>;
  dtype?: DataType | Record<string, DataType>;
  
  // External data format (large models)
  use_external_data_format?: boolean | number | Record<string, boolean | number>;
  
  // ONNX Runtime settings
  session_options?: InferenceSession.SessionOptions;
}

Basic Options

Progress Callback

Track model download and loading progress. Recommended: use progress_total for end-to-end progress, and optionally use progress for per-file details.

const fileProgress = {};

const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', null, {
  progress_callback: (info) => {
    // Recommended: end-to-end loading progress
    if (info.status === 'progress_total') {
      console.log(`Total: ${info.progress.toFixed(1)}%`);
      return;
    }

    // Optional: per-file progress
    if (info.status === 'progress') {
      fileProgress[info.file] = info.progress;
      console.log(`${info.file}: ${info.progress.toFixed(1)}%`);
    }
    
    if (info.status === 'done') {
      console.log(`✓ ${info.file} complete`);
    }
  }
});

Progress Info Types:

type ProgressInfo = {
  status: 'initiate' | 'download' | 'progress' | 'progress_total' | 'done' | 'ready';
  name: string;       // Model id or path
  file?: string;      // File being processed (per-file events)
  progress?: number;  // Percentage (0-100, for 'progress' and 'progress_total')
  loaded?: number;    // Bytes downloaded (only for 'progress' status)
  total?: number;     // Total bytes (only for 'progress' status)
};

Example: Browser Loading UI with Multiple Files

const statusDiv = document.getElementById('status');
const progressContainer = document.getElementById('progress-container');
const fileProgressBars = {};

const pipe = await pipeline('image-classification', null, {
  progress_callback: (info) => {
    if (info.status === 'progress_total') {
      statusDiv.textContent = `Total: ${info.progress.toFixed(1)}%`;
      return;
    }

    if (info.status === 'progress') {
      // Create progress bar for each file if not exists
      if (!fileProgressBars[info.file]) {
        const fileDiv = document.createElement('div');
        fileDiv.innerHTML = `
          <div class="file-name">${info.file}</div>
          <div class="progress-bar">
            <div class="progress-fill" style="width: 0%"></div>
          </div>
        `;
        progressContainer.appendChild(fileDiv);
        fileProgressBars[info.file] = fileDiv.querySelector('.progress-fill');
      }
      
      // Update progress bar
      fileProgressBars[info.file].style.width = `${info.progress}%`;
      
      const mb = (info.loaded / 1024 / 1024).toFixed(2);
      const totalMb = (info.total / 1024 / 1024).toFixed(2);
      statusDiv.textContent = `${info.file}: ${mb}/${totalMb} MB`;
    }
    
    if (info.status === 'ready') {
      statusDiv.textContent = 'Model ready!';
    }
  }
});

For more progress tracking examples, see the examples in this section above.

Custom Configuration

Override the model's default configuration:

import { pipeline } from '@huggingface/transformers';

const pipe = await pipeline('text-generation', 'model-id', {
  config: {
    max_length: 512,
    temperature: 0.8,
    // ... other config options
  }
});

Use cases:

  • Override default generation parameters

  • Adjust model-specific settings

  • Test different configurations without modifying model files

Model Loading Options

Cache Directory

Specify where to cache downloaded models:

// Node.js: Custom cache location
const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', 'model-id', {
  cache_dir: './my-custom-cache'
});

Default behavior:

  • If not specified, uses env.cacheDir (default: ./.cache)

  • Only applies when env.useFSCache = true (Node.js)

  • Browser cache uses Cache API (configured via env.cacheKey)

Local Files Only

Prevent any network requests:

const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', 'model-id', {
  local_files_only: true
});

Use cases:

  • Offline applications

  • Air-gapped environments

  • Testing with pre-downloaded models

  • Production deployments with bundled models

Important:

  • Model must already be cached or available locally

  • Throws error if model not found locally

  • Requires env.allowLocalModels = true

Model Revision

Specify a specific model version (git branch, tag, or commit):

const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', 'model-id', {
  revision: 'v1.0.0'  // Use specific version
});

// Or use a branch
const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', 'model-id', {
  revision: 'experimental'
});

// Or use a commit hash
const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', 'model-id', {
  revision: 'abc123def456'
});

Default: 'main' (latest version)

Use cases:

  • Pin to stable release for production

  • Test experimental features

  • Reproduce results with specific model version

  • Work with models under development

Important:

  • Only applies to remote models (Hugging Face Hub)

  • Ignored for local file paths

  • Each revision is cached separately

Model Subfolder

Specify the subfolder within the model repository:

const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', 'model-id', {
  subfolder: 'onnx'  // Default: 'onnx'
});

Default: 'onnx'

Use cases:

  • Custom model repository structure

  • Multiple model variants in same repo

  • Organizational preferences

Model File Name

Specify a custom model file name (without .onnx extension):

const pipe = await pipeline('text-generation', 'model-id', {
  model_file_name: 'decoder_model_merged'
});
// Loads: decoder_model_merged.onnx

Use cases:

  • Models with non-standard file names

  • Select specific model variant

  • Encoder-decoder models with separate files

Note: Currently only valid for encoder-only or decoder-only models.

Device and Performance Options

Device Selection

Choose where to run the model:

// Run on CPU (WASM - default)
const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', 'model-id', {
  device: 'wasm'
});

// Run on GPU (WebGPU)
const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', 'model-id', {
  device: 'webgpu'
});

Common devices:

  • 'wasm' - WebAssembly (CPU, most compatible)

  • 'webgpu' - WebGPU (GPU acceleration in supported runtimes)

  • 'cpu' - CPU

  • 'gpu' - Auto-detect GPU

  • 'cuda' - NVIDIA CUDA (Node.js with GPU)

See the full list in the devices.js source.

Per-component device selection:

For models with multiple components (encoder-decoder, vision-encoder-decoder, etc.):

const pipe = await pipeline('automatic-speech-recognition', 'model-id', {
  device: {
    encoder: 'webgpu',    // Run encoder on GPU
    decoder: 'wasm'       // Run decoder on CPU
  }
});

WebGPU Requirements:

  • Runtime with WebGPU support (browser, Node.js, Bun, or Deno)

  • Compatible hardware/driver stack

  • Adequate GPU memory

Data Type (Quantization)

Control model precision and size:

// Full precision (largest, most accurate)
const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', 'model-id', {
  dtype: 'fp32'
});

// Half precision (balanced)
const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', 'model-id', {
  dtype: 'fp16'
});

// 8-bit quantization (smaller, faster)
const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', 'model-id', {
  dtype: 'q8'
});

// 4-bit quantization (smallest, fastest)
const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', 'model-id', {
  dtype: 'q4'
});

Common data types:

  • 'fp32' - 32-bit floating point (full precision)

  • 'fp16' - 16-bit floating point (half precision)

  • 'q8' - 8-bit quantized (good balance)

  • 'q4' - 4-bit quantized (maximum compression)

  • 'int8' - 8-bit integer

  • 'uint8' - 8-bit unsigned integer

See the full list in the dtypes.js source.

Per-component data type:

const pipe = await pipeline('automatic-speech-recognition', 'model-id', {
  dtype: {
    encoder: 'fp32',  // Encoder at full precision
    decoder: 'q8'     // Decoder quantized
  }
});

Trade-offs:

Data TypeModel SizeSpeedAccuracyUse Case
fp32LargestSlowestHighestResearch, maximum quality
fp16MediumMediumHighProduction, GPU inference
q8SmallFastGoodProduction, CPU inference
q4SmallestFastestAcceptableEdge devices, real-time apps
External Data Format

For models >= 2GB, ONNX uses external data format:

// Automatically detect and load external data
const pipe = await pipeline('text-generation', 'large-model-id', {
  use_external_data_format: true
});

// Specify number of external data chunks
const pipe = await pipeline('text-generation', 'large-model-id', {
  use_external_data_format: 5  // Load 5 chunks (model.onnx_data_0 to _4)
});

How it works:

  • Models >= 2GB split weights into separate files

  • Main file: model.onnx (structure only)

  • Data files: model.onnx_data or model.onnx_data_0, model.onnx_data_1, etc.

Default behavior:

  • false - No external data (models < 2GB)

  • true - Load external data automatically

  • number - Load this many external data chunks

Maximum chunks: 100 (defined by MAX_EXTERNAL_DATA_CHUNKS)

Per-component external data:

const pipe = await pipeline('text-generation', 'large-model-id', {
  use_external_data_format: {
    encoder: true,
    decoder: 3  // Decoder has 3 external data chunks
  }
});
Session Options

Advanced ONNX Runtime configuration:

const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', 'model-id', {
  session_options: {
    executionProviders: ['webgpu', 'wasm'],
    graphOptimizationLevel: 'all',
    enableCpuMemArena: true,
    enableMemPattern: true,
    executionMode: 'sequential',
    logSeverityLevel: 2,
    logVerbosityLevel: 0
  }
});

Common session options:

OptionDescriptionDefault
executionProvidersOrdered list of execution providers['wasm']
graphOptimizationLevelGraph optimization: 'disabled', 'basic', 'extended', 'all''all'
enableCpuMemArenaEnable CPU memory arena for faster memory allocationtrue
enableMemPatternEnable memory pattern optimizationtrue
executionMode'sequential' or 'parallel''sequential'
logSeverityLevel0=Verbose, 1=Info, 2=Warning, 3=Error, 4=Fatal2
freeDimensionOverridesOverride dynamic dimensions (e.g., { batch_size: 1 })-

Use cases:

  • Fine-tune performance for specific hardware

  • Debug model execution issues

  • Override dynamic shapes

  • Control memory usage

Common Configuration Patterns

Development

Fast iteration with progress tracking:

import { pipeline } from '@huggingface/transformers';

const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', null, {
  progress_callback: (info) => {
    if (info.status === 'progress_total') {
      console.log(`Total: ${info.progress.toFixed(1)}%`);
    }
  }
});
Production (GPU)

Use WebGPU with fp16 for better performance:

const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', 'model-id', {
  device: 'webgpu',
  dtype: 'fp16'
});
Production (CPU)

Use quantization for smaller size and faster CPU inference:

const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', 'model-id', {
  dtype: 'q8'  // or 'q4' for even smaller
});
Offline/Local

Prevent network requests, use only local models:

import { pipeline, env } from '@huggingface/transformers';

env.allowLocalModels = true;
env.localModelPath = './models/';

const pipe = await pipeline('sentiment-analysis', 'model-id', {
  local_files_only: true
});
Per-Component Settings

For encoder-decoder models, configure each component separately:

const pipe = await pipeline('automatic-speech-recognition', 'model-id', {
  device: {
    encoder: 'webgpu',
    decoder: 'wasm'
  },
  dtype: {
    encoder: 'fp16',
    decoder: 'q8'
  }
});

Best Practices

  1. Progress Callbacks: Use progress_callback for large models to show download progress

  2. Quantization: Use q8 or q4 for CPU inference to reduce size and improve speed

  3. Device Selection: Use webgpu for better performance when available

  4. Offline-First: Use local_files_only: true in production to avoid runtime downloads

  5. Version Pinning: Use revision to pin model versions for reproducible deployments

  6. Memory Management: Always dispose pipelines with pipe.dispose() when done


This document covers all available options for the pipeline() function. For environment-level configuration (remote hosts, global cache settings, WASM paths), see the Configuration Reference.

Requirements and compatibility

Works with: Claude Code, Claude apps, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Kiro, OpenCode, Goose, Amp, Roo Code, JetBrains Junie, Factory Droid, Devin (ex-Windsurf), Mistral Vibe, OpenHands, Letta

“Works with” means the tool reads the open Agent Skills format; a skill written for one tool may use features others lack.

Needs: Needs Node.js

The author says: Requires Node.js 18+ (or compatible Bun/Deno runtime) or modern browser with ES modules support. WebGPU requires runtime and hardware support; WASM is the broad fallback. Internet access is needed for downloading models from Hugging Face Hub (optional if using local models).

Security

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Attribution and licence

Created by
huggingface
Publisher
Hugging Face (Official)
Distributed by
Hugging Face
Source
huggingface/skills · skills/transformers-js · commit 25910b3
Licence
Apache License 2.0 (redistribution allowed)
  • LICENSE (added by AutoGineer from LICENSE)
  • ATTRIBUTION.md (written by AutoGineer)
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