Gated models
Some Hugging Face repositories are gated: you must accept the license with your Hugging Face account before downloading, and the Hub then issues access to your account's requests.
How gated status appears
The catalog marks gated repositories with a Gated badge (manual approval requires a maintainer sign-off; auto is instant on acceptance). The model detail page shows the gated status in its metadata table.
What works today
- Browsing and searching includes gated repositories — you can see their metadata.
- The website never requests or stores any Hugging Face token.
Downloading gated models
Planned Authenticated gated downloads are planned. The intended flow: accept the license on huggingface.co, then provide your read token to the desktop app's credential store (never to the website or CLI logs). The token is used server-side by your own BotConnector installation, not by this website.
Until that ships, for a gated model:
- Accept the license on the Hub.
- Download the GGUF file manually from the repository page.
- Place it in the model store directory — see Model storage.
Why the website cannot do this for you
Gated access is account-bound. A website that held tokens could be abused to leak gated weights; BotConnector's design keeps credentials in your local credential store and out of browser code. See the security notes.
Related
- Hugging Face source — which endpoints are used.
- Status — current implementation state.