Pre-Installation Steps#

This page lists configuration tasks to consider before starting ViPPET. Some are mandatory, others are optional and enable specific features.

ViPPET will start and run without any of the optional steps below. Skip the ones you do not need.

Mandatory Steps#

There are no mandatory pre-installation steps beyond what is already covered in the installation guides:

Optional Steps#

Hugging Face token (for downloading models from Hugging Face Hub)#

ViPPET delegates model installation to the model-download service, which supports several hubs (for example huggingface, ultralytics, pipeline-zoo-models, openvino, geti, hls). To install models hosted on the Hugging Face Hub, especially gated or private repositories, the model-download service must be configured with a valid Hugging Face access token.

Without a token, ViPPET still runs normally and you can install models from the other supported hubs. Only the Hugging Face download functionality is disabled.

Get a token#

Sign in (or create an account) at https://huggingface.co.
Open Settings -> Access Tokens and create a new token. A token with the read role is sufficient to download public and gated models.
For any gated model, additionally accept its license on the model’s Hugging Face page while signed in with the same account.

Configure the token#

Provide the token to the model-download service through the HF_TOKEN environment variable. Pick one of the two options below.

Option A - shell environment variable (recommended)#

Export the variable in the shell before starting the stack. Docker Compose picks it up automatically because compose.yml already declares HF_TOKEN: ${HF_TOKEN:-} for the model-download service.

export HF_TOKEN="hf_your_token_here"
make run

To make the variable persistent, add the export line to ~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc, or your preferred shell startup file.

Option B - edit `compose.yml`#

Open compose.yml, locate the model-download service, and replace the default value with your token:

services:
  model-download:
    environment:
      HF_TOKEN: hf_your_token_here

Do not commit the modified compose.yml to a public repository.

Apply the change#

HF_TOKEN is read by the model-download container at startup. After setting or changing the token, restart the whole stack so the new value is picked up:

make stop run

A simple docker compose restart model-download is not enough if you also changed compose.yml, because Compose needs to re-read the file. Using make stop run always works.