model-cards
CLI reference tool for the open-weight AI model explosion — search, view, and compare model cards from Hugging Face in your terminal
model-cards
CLI reference tool for open-weight AI models. Search, inspect, and compare Hugging Face model cards — all from your terminal.
Why?
The open-weight AI model landscape is exploding. Every week brings a new release — Qwen, DeepSeek, Llama, Mistral, Phi, Gemma, and more. Keeping track of their specs (parameters, context window, license, architecture, hardware requirements) across scattered Hugging Face pages is tedious.
model-cards brings the Hugging Face model registry to your terminal. One command to search, one to inspect details, one to compare models side-by-side.
Installation
pip install model-cards
Or from source:
git clone https://github.com/vikasudasi/model-cards.git
cd model-cards
pip install -e .
Usage
Search
model-cards search qwen
model-cards search llama --limit 20
Outputs a rich table with: Model ID, Task, Downloads, Likes, License, Last Updated.
View details
model-cards show Qwen/Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct
Renders a detailed panel with Overview, Hardware, Specs, Benchmarks, Card Metadata, and Stats sections.
Compare (up to 4 models)
model-cards compare qwen3-coder kimi-k2.6 deepseek-v4
Side-by-side table with the best value in each row highlighted.
List trending
model-cards list
JSON output
model-cards search qwen --json | jq '.[].model_id'
Displayed Fields
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Model ID | Hugging Face model identifier |
| Task | Pipeline type (text-generation, etc.) |
| Parameters | Model size (e.g., 7.8B, 235B) |
| Context Window | Max sequence length (e.g., 128K) |
| License | MIT, Apache 2.0, etc. |
| Architecture | Model architecture type |
| Hardware | VRAM estimate + rating (Easy/Moderate/Heavy/Very Heavy) |
| Downloads | Total download count |
| Likes | HF likes count |
Environment
-
HF_TOKEN— optional Hugging Face token for higher API rate limits
Tech Stack
- httpx — async HTTP client with rate limiting and in-memory caching
- rich — terminal tables, panels, and colored output
- argparse — CLI entry point
License
MIT