Downloading models

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 modelPath argument to Chat.fromPath and Model.downloadModel accepts:

Form	Example	Notes
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
Local path	./model.gguf	Used as-is

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.

Tracking download progress

When loading from a remote URL, pass a progress closure to Chat.fromPath. It receives (downloaded, total) byte counts and is not called for cached or local files.

let chat = try await Chat.fromPath(
    modelPath: "hf://NobodyWho/Qwen_Qwen3-0.6B-GGUF/Qwen_Qwen3-0.6B-Q4_K_M.gguf"
) { downloaded, total in
    print("Downloaded \(downloaded)/\(total) bytes")
}

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 Chat.fromPath at the local path:

let chat = try await Chat.fromPath(modelPath: "./model.gguf")

Or use Model.downloadModel with an Authorization header:

import NobodyWho

let modelPath = try await Model.downloadModel(
    modelPath: "hf://NobodyWho/Qwen_Qwen3-0.6B-GGUF/Qwen_Qwen3-0.6B-Q4_K_M.gguf",
    headers: ["Authorization": "Bearer your_hf_token"]
)

let chat = try await Chat.fromPath(modelPath: modelPath)

You can generate a HuggingFace token in your account settings.

Inspecting the model cache

getCachedModels() returns every .gguf model in NobodyWho's cache directory, paired with its size in bytes. This is the same cache used by Model.downloadModel and by Chat.fromPath's hf:// paths.

import NobodyWho

let models = try getCachedModels()
for model in models {
    print("\(model.path): \(model.size) bytes")
}

Each CachedModel has:

• path: String — absolute path to the cached .gguf file
• size: UInt64 — size in bytes

The array is empty if nothing has been downloaded yet. The call throws if the cache directory cannot be read.