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Hugging Face Inference Providers exposes an OpenAI-compatible chat completions router in front of many hosted models (DeepSeek, Llama, and more) under one token. OpenClaw talks to the chat completions endpoint only; for text-to-image, embeddings, or speech use the HF inference clients directly.
PropertyValue
Provider idhuggingface
Pluginbundled (enabled by default, no install step)
Auth env varHUGGINGFACE_HUB_TOKEN or HF_TOKEN (fine-grained token)
APIOpenAI-compatible (https://router.huggingface.co/v1)
BillingSingle HF token; pricing follows provider rates with a free tier

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Getting started

1

Create a fine-grained token

Go to Hugging Face Settings Tokens and create a new fine-grained token.
The token must have the Make calls to Inference Providers permission enabled or API requests will be rejected.
2

Run onboarding

Choose Hugging Face in the provider dropdown, then enter your API key when prompted:
openclaw onboard --auth-choice huggingface-api-key
3

Select a default model

In the Default Hugging Face model dropdown, pick a model. The list loads from the Inference API when your token is valid; otherwise OpenClaw shows the built-in catalog below. Your choice is saved as agents.defaults.model.primary:
{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      model: { primary: "huggingface/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1" },
    },
  },
}
4

Verify the model is available

openclaw models list --provider huggingface

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Non-interactive setup

openclaw onboard --non-interactive \
  --mode local \
  --auth-choice huggingface-api-key \
  --huggingface-api-key "$HF_TOKEN"
Sets huggingface/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1 as the default model.

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Model IDs

Model refs use the form huggingface/<org>/<model> (Hub-style IDs). OpenClaw’s built-in catalog:
ModelRef (prefix with huggingface/)
DeepSeek R1deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1
DeepSeek V3.1deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.1
GPT-OSS 120Bopenai/gpt-oss-120b
Llama 3.3 70B Instruct Turbometa-llama/Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct-Turbo
When your token is valid, OpenClaw also discovers any other model from GET https://router.huggingface.co/v1/models at onboarding time and Gateway startup, so your catalog can include far more than the four models above. You can append :fastest or :cheapest to any model id; HF’s router routes to the matching inference provider. Set your default provider order in Inference Provider settings.

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Advanced configuration

OpenClaw discovers models with:
GET https://router.huggingface.co/v1/models
Authorization: Bearer $HUGGINGFACE_HUB_TOKEN   # or $HF_TOKEN
The response is OpenAI-style: { "object": "list", "data": [ { "id": "Qwen/Qwen3-8B", "owned_by": "Qwen", ... }, ... ] }.With a configured key (onboarding, HUGGINGFACE_HUB_TOKEN, or HF_TOKEN), the Default Hugging Face model dropdown during interactive setup is populated from this endpoint. Gateway startup repeats the same call to refresh the catalog. Discovered models are merged with the built-in catalog above (used for metadata like context window and cost when an id matches). If the request fails, returns no data, or no key is set, OpenClaw falls back to the built-in catalog only.Disable discovery without removing the provider:
openclaw config set plugins.entries.huggingface.config.discovery.enabled false
  • Name from API: discovered models use the API’s name, title, or display_name when present; otherwise OpenClaw derives a name from the model id (e.g. deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1 becomes “DeepSeek R1”).
  • Override display name: set a custom label per model in config:
{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      models: {
        "huggingface/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1": { alias: "DeepSeek R1 (fast)" },
        "huggingface/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1:cheapest": { alias: "DeepSeek R1 (cheap)" },
      },
    },
  },
}
  • Policy suffixes: :fastest and :cheapest are HF router conventions, not something OpenClaw rewrites: the suffix is sent verbatim as part of the model id and HF’s router picks the matching inference provider. Add each variant as its own entry under models.providers.huggingface.models (or in model.primary) if you want a distinct alias per suffix.
  • Config merge: existing entries in models.providers.huggingface.models (e.g. in models.json) are kept on config merge, so any custom name, alias, or model options you set there persist across restarts.
If the Gateway runs as a daemon (launchd/systemd), make sure HUGGINGFACE_HUB_TOKEN or HF_TOKEN is available to that process (for example, in ~/.openclaw/.env or via env.shellEnv).
OpenClaw accepts both HUGGINGFACE_HUB_TOKEN and HF_TOKEN. If both are set, HUGGINGFACE_HUB_TOKEN takes precedence.
{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      model: {
        primary: "huggingface/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1",
        fallbacks: ["huggingface/openai/gpt-oss-120b"],
      },
      models: {
        "huggingface/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1": { alias: "DeepSeek R1" },
        "huggingface/openai/gpt-oss-120b": { alias: "GPT-OSS 120B" },
      },
    },
  },
}

{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      model: { primary: "huggingface/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1" },
      models: {
        "huggingface/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1": { alias: "DeepSeek R1" },
        "huggingface/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1:cheapest": { alias: "DeepSeek R1 (cheapest)" },
        "huggingface/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1:fastest": { alias: "DeepSeek R1 (fastest)" },
      },
    },
  },
}

{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      model: {
        primary: "huggingface/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.1",
        fallbacks: [
          "huggingface/meta-llama/Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct-Turbo",
          "huggingface/openai/gpt-oss-120b",
        ],
      },
      models: {
        "huggingface/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.1": { alias: "DeepSeek V3.1" },
        "huggingface/meta-llama/Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct-Turbo": { alias: "Llama 3.3 70B Turbo" },
        "huggingface/openai/gpt-oss-120b": { alias: "GPT-OSS 120B" },
      },
    },
  },
}

Model selection

Overview of all providers, model refs, and failover behavior.

Model selection

How to choose and configure models.

Inference Providers docs

Official Hugging Face Inference Providers documentation.

Configuration

Full config reference.