Managing Models and Libraries
Some nodes run AI models locally and need the model files on disk before they can run; others come from a library you haven't installed yet. Both are managed from the editor's Manage menu, in the Model Management and Library Management windows. This page covers both.
For the concepts behind libraries — how installs are isolated from each other, Shared vs. Isolated execution, and what to do when something goes wrong — see Libraries. This page is about the two management windows themselves.
Model Management
Open Manage → Model Management to search for, download, and clean up models.
Everything this window does is also available from the terminal via
gtn models (search, download, list, delete, and download status) — see
the CLI reference.
Searching for a model
Type into the search box to search Hugging Face for matching models as you type. Matching results appear in a dropdown below the box, showing each model's ID, description (if any), download count, likes, and a few of its tags; models you already have installed are marked Installed. Click a result to select it — the field then shows the model's size (once the engine has looked it up) and a link to open it on Hugging Face.
If you already know the exact model ID, you can type it directly instead of searching and picking from the dropdown.
Downloading a model
With a model selected, click Download. The download starts in the background — you can keep working, close the window, or switch to Library Management, and the download keeps going.
Tracking progress
The Downloads section lists every active and recently finished download, each with a status badge:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Downloading | In progress. Shows a progress bar and how many GB are done out of the total, plus a percentage. |
| Completed | Finished; the bar fills green. |
| Failed | The download didn't finish. The error message is shown below the entry (including any Hugging Face access-request link, if that's the cause — see Gated models below). |
Use the All / Downloads / Models chips above the list to narrow it to just active downloads or just installed models.
Cancelling a download
Click the trash icon on an entry that's still downloading to cancel it. A Cancel Download confirmation appears first — Keep Downloading backs out, Cancel Download stops it and removes the partial download record.
Deleting a model
The Installed Models section lists everything you've already downloaded, with its local path and size. Click the trash icon to remove one. A Delete Model dialog confirms first — deleting is permanent, removes the files from local storage, and any workflow that depends on that model will fail until you either re-download it or point the workflow at a different one.
Gated models need a token
Some models on Hugging Face are gated — you need to request access on the
model's page, and you need a Hugging Face access token configured in
Griptape Nodes before you can download them. If no token is configured, the
Model Management window shows a banner at the top explaining how to fix
that: create a token on Hugging Face, then add it as HF_TOKEN under
Settings → API Keys & Secrets. The banner's link jumps you straight
there.
See Setup for Nodes that use Hugging Face for the full walkthrough, including how to request access to a specific gated model.
Library Management
Open Manage → Library Management to install, update, and remove
libraries. From the terminal, gtn libraries download <git-url> and
gtn libraries sync cover installing and updating — see the
CLI reference.
The filter bar at the top lets you search installed libraries by name and narrow the list with the All / Updates / Errors chips — Errors is the fastest way to find a library that failed to load. Two icon buttons next to the chips let you check all libraries for updates or just refresh the list.
Click any library's row to expand it and see its description, its Git remote and ref (for Git-installed libraries), and any problems the engine reported loading it.
Installing a library
Click Add Library to open the Add Library dialog. Paste a Git URL — for example a GitHub repository hosting a community library — and click Install.
The editor first inspects the repository and shows you a confirmation with the library's name, description, version, and node count before actually cloning it, so you can back out if it's not what you expected.
Advanced Options (the disclosure below the URL field) lets you set:
- Branch / Tag / Commit — install a specific ref instead of the repository's default branch.
- Download Directory — where the library gets cloned to, if you don't want the default libraries directory. Use the folder icon to browse for one.
Not sure what to install? Browse Community Libraries, below the form, opens a curated directory of libraries you can copy a URL from and paste back into the field above.
If the target directory already has something in it — a previous install of the same library, or unrelated files — you'll see a confirmation asking whether to overwrite it. Overwriting is destructive: it deletes what's there (including any uncommitted changes to a Git checkout) and replaces it with the new install. This is the same overwrite confirmation you'll see if you update a library that has local modifications.
Updating a library
Expand a library that has a Git remote and click Check for Updates to compare it against the remote. If an update is available, an Update button appears on its row (labeled with the target version when the engine knows it, e.g. Update to 1.4.0); click it to pull the update in. If the update is being held back — releases only become eligible once they've aged past a minimum, so you don't pull in something published minutes ago — the row shows how long until it's eligible instead of an Update button.
You can also switch a library to a different branch, tag, or commit directly from its expanded row: click the current ref to edit it in place, then confirm.
If a library's dependencies didn't install automatically, Install Dependencies on its expanded row retries just that step without re-cloning the library.
Removing a library
The Library Management window itself doesn't delete a library's files from disk — for that, plus toggling a library off without removing it, or choosing whether it runs Shared or Isolated, see Toggling and removing libraries in the Libraries guide.