Downloading models

How NobodyWho downloads, caches, and inspects GGUF models in Godot.

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NobodyWho can either load a model from a path on disk or download it for you on first use, caching it for subsequent runs. This page covers the available model path formats, how to observe a download in progress, how to access gated/private models, and how to inspect what's already in the local cache.

Supported model path formats

The model_path field on NobodyWhoModel (and projection_model_path for vision models) accepts several forms:

Form	Example	Notes
Godot resource path	res://models/my-model.gguf	Bundled with your game export
User data path	user://downloaded.gguf	Written by your game at runtime
Absolute filesystem path	/opt/models/foo.gguf	Local file
HuggingFace reference	hf:owner/repo/file.gguf	Downloaded and cached on first use
HTTPS URL	https://example.com/model.gguf	Downloaded and cached on first use

The HuggingFace prefix is case-insensitive and the // is optional — hf:, hf://, huggingface:, and huggingface:// all mean the same thing. Remote models are downloaded to the platform cache directory on first load and re-used on subsequent runs. Downloads happen on a background thread — the Godot main loop stays responsive while a multi-GB model is fetched.

Showing download progress

NobodyWhoModel emits a download_progress(downloaded, total) signal while a remote model is downloading, throttled to roughly 10 Hz with a guaranteed final emit on completion. Connect it if you'd like to drive a progress bar:

model.download_progress.connect(func(downloaded: int, total: int):
    print("%d / %d bytes" % [downloaded, total])
)

The signal is not emitted for local files or already-cached downloads.

Downloading a gated model

Some HuggingFace models are private or gated by a license you need to accept. In both cases you need to be authorized to download the model weights.

You can manually download the GGUF file via your web browser and then point your NobodyWhoModel at the local path.

Alternatively, use the NobodyWhoDownloader node, which lets you pass an authorization header:

var dl = NobodyWhoDownloader.new()
dl.model_path = "huggingface:NobodyWho/Qwen_Qwen3-0.6B-GGUF/Qwen_Qwen3-0.6B-Q4_K_M.gguf"
dl.headers = {"Authorization": "Bearer your_hf_token"}
dl.download_complete.connect(func(local_path: String):
    get_node("../ChatModel").model_path = local_path
)
dl.download_failed.connect(func(error: String):
    push_error("Download failed: " + error)
)
dl.start_download()
add_child(dl)

You can generate a HuggingFace token in your account settings.

Inspecting the model cache

NobodyWhoModel.get_cached_models() is a static function that returns every .gguf model in NobodyWho's cache directory, paired with its size in bytes. This is the same cache used by NobodyWhoDownloader and by NobodyWhoModel's huggingface: paths.

for entry in NobodyWhoModel.get_cached_models():
    print("%s: %d bytes" % [entry["path"], entry["size"]])

Each entry is a Dictionary with two keys:

• "path" — absolute path to the cached .gguf file
• "size" — size in bytes

The array is empty if nothing has been downloaded yet. On error the function returns null and logs a Godot error to the console.