Gated and private Hugging Face repos

Some repos are gated: the author, for example Meta for Llama or Google for Gemma, asks you to accept their terms before you can download. Private repos are visible only to their owner or organization. BitsRun can deploy both with your Hugging Face token.

Steps

1. Sign in at huggingface.co and open the model page. Select the button to accept the terms. Some authors review requests, so access may take a while.
2. Create a read token at huggingface.co/settings/tokens with the account that accepted the terms.
3. In the BitsRun dashboard, open API keys, scroll to Hugging Face token, paste it and select Save token.
4. Deploy the repo as usual, for example hf:meta-llama/Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct.

In the terminal:

bitsrun hf-token set
bitsrun deploy hf:meta-llama/Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct

bitsrun hf-token set asks for the token without showing it. In scripts, pipe it in: echo "$HF_TOKEN" | bitsrun hf-token set.

What happens after you deploy

1. BitsRun checks your token can read the repo.
2. It copies the model files into your private storage. The endpoint card shows Copying the model with progress. Large models take a few minutes.
3. When the copy finishes, the endpoint turns ready by itself and wakes on the first request (or starts at once if you ticked Start it when the copy finishes).

Requests are refused while the copy runs, and no GPU time is billed. The copy counts toward your model storage, so you need a positive balance to start one. You can have 2 copies running at once.

How we handle your token

• We check it with Hugging Face before saving it.
• It is stored encrypted and never shown again. The dashboard only shows its last characters.
• It is used only to read and copy the repos you deploy.
• Remove it any time with Remove on the API keys page or bitsrun hf-token rm. Models you already copied stay in your storage.

What can go wrong