Hugging Face (inference)

OpenClaw discovers models by calling the Inference endpoint directly:

GET https://router.huggingface.co/v1/models

(Optional: send Authorization: Bearer $HUGGINGFACE_HUB_TOKEN or $HF_TOKEN for the full list; some endpoints return a subset without auth.) The response is OpenAI-style { "object": "list", "data": [ { "id": "Qwen/Qwen3-8B", "owned_by": "Qwen", ... }, ... ] }.

When you configure a Hugging Face API key (via onboarding, HUGGINGFACE_HUB_TOKEN, or HF_TOKEN), OpenClaw uses this GET to discover available chat-completion models. During interactive setup, after you enter your token you see a Default Hugging Face model dropdown populated from that list (or the built-in catalog if the request fails). At runtime (e.g. Gateway startup), when a key is present, OpenClaw again calls GET https://router.huggingface.co/v1/models to refresh the catalog. The list is merged with a built-in catalog (for metadata like context window and cost). If the request fails or no key is set, only the built-in catalog is used.

• Name from API: The model display name is hydrated from GET /v1/models when the API returns name, title, or display_name; otherwise it is derived from the model id (e.g. deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1 becomes "DeepSeek R1").
• Override display name: You can set a custom label per model in config so it appears the way you want in the CLI and UI:

{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      models: {
        "huggingface/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1": { alias: "DeepSeek R1 (fast)" },
        "huggingface/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1:cheapest": { alias: "DeepSeek R1 (cheap)" },
      },
    },
  },
}

• Policy suffixes: OpenClaw's bundled Hugging Face docs and helpers currently treat these two suffixes as the built-in policy variants:

  • :fastest — highest throughput.
  • :cheapest — lowest cost per output token.

  You can add these as separate entries in models.providers.huggingface.models or set model.primary with the suffix. You can also set your default provider order in Inference Provider settings (no suffix = use that order).

• Config merge: Existing entries in models.providers.huggingface.models (e.g. in models.json) are kept when config is merged. So any custom name, alias, or model options you set there are preserved.

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).

{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      model: {
        primary: "huggingface/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1",
        fallbacks: ["huggingface/Qwen/Qwen3-8B"],
      },
      models: {
        "huggingface/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1": { alias: "DeepSeek R1" },
        "huggingface/Qwen/Qwen3-8B": { alias: "Qwen3 8B" },
      },
    },
  },
}

{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      model: { primary: "huggingface/Qwen/Qwen3-8B" },
      models: {
        "huggingface/Qwen/Qwen3-8B": { alias: "Qwen3 8B" },
        "huggingface/Qwen/Qwen3-8B:cheapest": { alias: "Qwen3 8B (cheapest)" },
        "huggingface/Qwen/Qwen3-8B:fastest": { alias: "Qwen3 8B (fastest)" },
      },
    },
  },
}

{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      model: {
        primary: "huggingface/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.2",
        fallbacks: [
          "huggingface/meta-llama/Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct",
          "huggingface/openai/gpt-oss-120b",
        ],
      },
      models: {
        "huggingface/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.2": { alias: "DeepSeek V3.2" },
        "huggingface/meta-llama/Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct": { alias: "Llama 3.3 70B" },
        "huggingface/openai/gpt-oss-120b": { alias: "GPT-OSS 120B" },
      },
    },
  },
}

{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      model: { primary: "huggingface/Qwen/Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct:cheapest" },
      models: {
        "huggingface/Qwen/Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct": { alias: "Qwen2.5 7B" },
        "huggingface/Qwen/Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct:cheapest": { alias: "Qwen2.5 7B (cheap)" },
        "huggingface/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1:fastest": { alias: "DeepSeek R1 (fast)" },
        "huggingface/meta-llama/Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct": { alias: "Llama 3.1 8B" },
      },
    },
  },
}