Instructions to use HuggingFaceTB/SmolVLM-Base with libraries, inference providers, notebooks, and local apps. Follow these links to get started.

Libraries

How to use HuggingFaceTB/SmolVLM-Base with Transformers:

# Use a pipeline as a high-level helper
from transformers import pipeline

pipe = pipeline("image-text-to-text", model="HuggingFaceTB/SmolVLM-Base")
messages = [
    {
        "role": "user",
        "content": [
            {"type": "image", "url": "https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/p-blog/candy.JPG"},
            {"type": "text", "text": "What animal is on the candy?"}
        ]
    },
]
pipe(text=messages)

# Load model directly
from transformers import AutoProcessor, AutoModelForImageTextToText

processor = AutoProcessor.from_pretrained("HuggingFaceTB/SmolVLM-Base")
model = AutoModelForImageTextToText.from_pretrained("HuggingFaceTB/SmolVLM-Base")
messages = [
    {
        "role": "user",
        "content": [
            {"type": "image", "url": "https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/p-blog/candy.JPG"},
            {"type": "text", "text": "What animal is on the candy?"}
        ]
    },
]
inputs = processor.apply_chat_template(
	messages,
	add_generation_prompt=True,
	tokenize=True,
	return_dict=True,
	return_tensors="pt",
).to(model.device)

outputs = model.generate(**inputs, max_new_tokens=40)
print(processor.decode(outputs[0][inputs["input_ids"].shape[-1]:]))

Notebooks
Google Colab
Kaggle
Local Apps

vLLM

How to use HuggingFaceTB/SmolVLM-Base with vLLM:

Install from pip and serve model

# Install vLLM from pip:
pip install vllm
# Start the vLLM server:
vllm serve "HuggingFaceTB/SmolVLM-Base"
# Call the server using curl (OpenAI-compatible API):
curl -X POST "http://localhost:8000/v1/chat/completions" \
	-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
	--data '{
		"model": "HuggingFaceTB/SmolVLM-Base",
		"messages": [
			{
				"role": "user",
				"content": [
					{
						"type": "text",
						"text": "Describe this image in one sentence."
					},
					{
						"type": "image_url",
						"image_url": {
							"url": "https://cdn.britannica.com/61/93061-050-99147DCE/Statue-of-Liberty-Island-New-York-Bay.jpg"
						}
					}
				]
			}
		]
	}'

Use Docker

docker model run hf.co/HuggingFaceTB/SmolVLM-Base

SGLang

How to use HuggingFaceTB/SmolVLM-Base with SGLang:

Install from pip and serve model

# Install SGLang from pip:
pip install sglang
# Start the SGLang server:
python3 -m sglang.launch_server \
    --model-path "HuggingFaceTB/SmolVLM-Base" \
    --host 0.0.0.0 \
    --port 30000
# Call the server using curl (OpenAI-compatible API):
curl -X POST "http://localhost:30000/v1/chat/completions" \
	-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
	--data '{
		"model": "HuggingFaceTB/SmolVLM-Base",
		"messages": [
			{
				"role": "user",
				"content": [
					{
						"type": "text",
						"text": "Describe this image in one sentence."
					},
					{
						"type": "image_url",
						"image_url": {
							"url": "https://cdn.britannica.com/61/93061-050-99147DCE/Statue-of-Liberty-Island-New-York-Bay.jpg"
						}
					}
				]
			}
		]
	}'

Use Docker images

docker run --gpus all \
    --shm-size 32g \
    -p 30000:30000 \
    -v ~/.cache/huggingface:/root/.cache/huggingface \
    --env "HF_TOKEN=<secret>" \
    --ipc=host \
    lmsysorg/sglang:latest \
    python3 -m sglang.launch_server \
        --model-path "HuggingFaceTB/SmolVLM-Base" \
        --host 0.0.0.0 \
        --port 30000
# Call the server using curl (OpenAI-compatible API):
curl -X POST "http://localhost:30000/v1/chat/completions" \
	-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
	--data '{
		"model": "HuggingFaceTB/SmolVLM-Base",
		"messages": [
			{
				"role": "user",
				"content": [
					{
						"type": "text",
						"text": "Describe this image in one sentence."
					},
					{
						"type": "image_url",
						"image_url": {
							"url": "https://cdn.britannica.com/61/93061-050-99147DCE/Statue-of-Liberty-Island-New-York-Bay.jpg"
						}
					}
				]
			}
		]
	}'

Docker Model Runner
How to use HuggingFaceTB/SmolVLM-Base with Docker Model Runner:
```
docker model run hf.co/HuggingFaceTB/SmolVLM-Base
```

Best dataset for highest DocVQA

by supercharge19 - opened Dec 2, 2024

Discussion

supercharge19

Dec 2, 2024

•

edited Dec 2, 2024

Hi, just came from thread: Best option for DocQVA->JSON in HuggingFaceTB/SmolVLM-Instruct. So, what would be the best dataset for this purpose. I am looking forward to train this model to be able to work on pdf files with very complex and intricate tables, data will be highly unstructured and unpredictable. Is there a dataset can be used to train a model to perform well for the purpose?

My idea is to first turn pdf to image so OCRing can be possible then run these images through the model to extract data in json or markdown format.

supercharge19 changed discussion title from Best database for highest DocVQA to Best dataset for highest DocVQA Dec 2, 2024

Glider95

Apr 30, 2025

Hello @supercharge19 ,

I initiated the discussion on DocVQA -> JSON.
I am still working on this use-case. I have not progressed far yet however there has been release of datasets that could be interesting for this use-case:

https://huggingface.co/datasets/OpenGVLab/InternVL-Data - Soon InternVL3 data too.
https://huggingface.co/datasets/allenai/olmOCR-mix-0225 - A good set of documents for OCR fine-tuning, however the response format is " natural reading order" not a JSON format.

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