Tao Port Huggingface Model

Standalone install? If this session was not initialized by the TAO skill bank plugin, run the tao-setup skill first (host preflight, credentials, cross-skill discovery).

<!-- Copyright (c) 2026, NVIDIA CORPORATION. All rights reserved. Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License. -->

TAO-HF Integration Skill

Integrate a HuggingFace (HF) Computer Vision model into the NVIDIA TAO Toolkit ecosystem. Work the phases iteratively — not purely linearly — via a build → test → debug → fix → retest loop at every step: when something fails, diagnose and fix before moving on; when it passes, move to the next step.

This SKILL.md is the workflow coordinator. Each phase has a dedicated references/phase-N-*.md with the full step-by-step content, code, docker invocations, and gates. Read the matching reference at the start of each phase — the summaries below are not sufficient.

---

Local-Only Rule

All work is strictly local. Do NOT push/commit/branch on any remote (GitLab, GitHub, HuggingFace), create merge/pull requests or issues, or upload/publish Docker images to any registry or artifact store. You may only read/clone from remotes — all edits, Docker builds, and test runs stay on the local machine.

---

Submodule Override Strategy

The user clones the four TAO repos (tao-core, tao-pytorch, tao-deploy, tao-dataservices) independently into one working directory. The tao-core/ submodule nested inside each repo points to the original unmodified commit; modifications only exist in the top-level tao-core/. Always install from the top-level tao-core/, never <repo>/tao-core/ — the nested submodule silently ignores all modifications. Override rules: (1) mount the working directory -v $(pwd):/workspace; (2) pip install /workspace/tao-core FIRST, before tao-pytorch/tao-deploy; (3) PYTHONPATH top-level tao-core first, e.g. -e PYTHONPATH=/workspace/tao-core:/workspace/tao-pytorch. See references/cross-cutting.md for the directory tree.

---

Execution platform

Every test, smoke run, and end-to-end validation executes inside a locally prepared TAO Toolkit container (tao-pytorch-base:latest, tao-deploy-base:latest, optionally tao-dataservices-base:latest — all from Phase 0). The platform skills own how to run them; this skill specifies what. Default platform: local-docker. Phase 0 delegates the driver / CUDA / NCT preflight to tao-setup-nvidia-gpu-host. See references/cross-cutting.md for the authoritative-skill table, bind-mount rationale, and canonical docker-run flag set.

---

Phase Map

Cross-cutting refs: workflow-consistency.md (CLI flow, config field paths, cross-phase dependencies); cross-cutting.md (platform, isolation, module pitfalls, debugging).

IMPORTANT — Continuous Execution Through Phase 6: do NOT stop after Phases 3–5 to wait for the user to run tests. Phase 6 is mandatory — not complete until tests pass inside the containers and the end-to-end pipeline is validated.

---

Development Loop

At every step: write code → test immediately (import check, unit test, or dry-run) → if it fails, read traceback → diagnose → fix → retest; if it passes, move on. Do NOT accumulate untested code — testing only at the end compounds bugs.

---

Debugging Playbook

When something fails, consult the symptom → likely-cause → fix table in references/cross-cutting.md before trying random fixes — it covers ModuleNotFoundError, BACKBONE_REGISTRY KeyError, shape mismatch, NaN loss, ONNX/TRT build failures, TRT-vs-PyTorch accuracy gaps, OOM, DDP hangs, checkpoint load failures, and stale-submodule config issues.

---

Environment Isolation Strategy

All Python work runs inside Docker containers — no host venvs, no pip installs into host Python (the host needs only Docker, from tao-setup-nvidia-gpu-host). Three contexts: A (Phase 1 HF inspection in tao-hf-inspect, python:3.12-slim fallback), B (Phase 3/4/6 smoke/L0/e2e in the prepared container, source via pip install /workspace/tao-core && python setup.py develop), C (host-bind-mount scratch). See references/cross-cutting.md for the contexts in full and the four numbered rules verbatim (--check-only host packages; Phase 1 --user $(id -u):$(id -g) vs. root; HOME=/workspace/PIP_USER=1 fallback; distro package-manager list; root:root trade-off; tao-hf-inspect cleanup).

---

Phase 0 — Prerequisites Check

Goal: verify Python 3.10+ and git; delegate the driver / CUDA / Docker / NVIDIA Container Toolkit host check to tao-setup-nvidia-gpu-host; verify NGC docker login for nvcr.io. Then ask the user for the TAO Toolkit image references (tao-pytorch, tao-deploy, optionally tao-dataservices), pull, and prepare local tags tao-pytorch-base:latest, tao-deploy-base:latest, tao-dataservices-base:latest for later phases — preparation removes the pre-installed released TAO packages so the user's /workspace/... clones install/load via pip install /workspace/tao-core && python setup.py develop. Hard stop on any failed check. Required user inputs: the image references + credentials (NGC login, HF_TOKEN). Full commands, prompt wording, and per-image Dockerfile snippets: the Phase 0 reference.

Gate: all prerequisite checks pass; the user supplied the required image references; tao-pytorch-base:latest and tao-deploy-base:latest exist locally; tao-dataservices-base:latest exists if dataservices work is anticipated.

---

Phase 1 — Information Gathering & Validation

Goal: decide whether to proceed at all. Gather credentials, locate/clone the four TAO repos, create a consistent working branch, launch the tao-hf-inspect container (Context A), validate the HF model is CV with a supported pipeline_tag, extract config + state-dict schema, sanity-check ONNX export, clean up. Full steps: Phase 1 references.

Reject if: pipeline_tag is NLP / audio / LLM (non-CV); AutoConfig raises; or ONNX export fundamentally cannot work (no rewrite path).

Gate: all 4 TAO repos located/cloned with a consistent branch; pipeline_tag confirmed CV; model_type, image_size, hidden_size, num_labels extracted; state-dict keys documented + HF→TAO remapping plan drafted; ONNX export sanity check passed (or failure understood); user confirmed model_short_name + task type. (Full checklist: phase-1-inspection.md.) Present findings and get user confirmation first.

---

Phase 2 — Codebase Exploration

Goal: find the closest existing TAO reference model for the detected pipeline_tag, read its implementation across tao-core / tao-pytorch / tao-deploy, and decide whether the backbone exists in backbone_v2/ or is new.

The HF pipeline_tag → TAO reference model mapping (classification → classification_pyt, detection → dino/rtdetr, segmentation → segformer, instance → mask2former, panoptic → oneformer, zero-shot → grounding_dino, depth → mono_depth) drives everything downstream (config, architecture, loss, ONNX shape, TRT builder, deploy classes, metrics, dataset format). See the Phase 2 references for the full reference list (12 files per model), the backbone_v2/ and tao-dataservices coverage checks, and per-task architecture.

If a new backbone is needed, decide the strategy (timm wrap > re-implement > HF black-box wrap) before Phase 3 — it changes weight loading, ONNX export, deploy. Never dual-inherit from transformers.PreTrainedModel and BackboneBase (metaclass conflict — compose instead).

Gate: reference TAO model identified + all 12 reference locations read; task-type implications understood (architecture, loss, ONNX outputs, deploy classes, metrics, dataset); backbone coverage decided (reuse / wrap timm / new); dataservices coverage checked. (Full checklist: phase-2-codebase.md.)

---

Phase 3 — TAO Core Configuration & Native Implementation

Goal: write the tao-core config schema + the tao-pytorch trainer / native inference / evaluation, smoke-testing between steps. (<model_name> = snake_case short-name; <ModelName> = PascalCase.)

Steps 1–7 (each builds on the previous, smoke-test between): tao-core config (1), tao-pytorch trainer (2), multi-GPU/multi-node (3), native inference → result.csv (4), native evaluation → results.json (5), MLOps for training and eval/infer → status.json (6–7). The ExperimentConfig(CommonExperimentConfig) must contain model, dataset, train, evaluate, inference, export, gen_trt_engine, quantize. All ??? fields are MISSING (user supplies via YAML/CLI); the augmentation.mean/std, model.head.in_channels, checkpoint-name, and onnx_file matches are in the checklist below.

Full per-step bodies, code, the canonical experiment_spec.yaml, and smoke-test commands: the Phase 3 references.

Gates: Step 1 — ExperimentConfig imports cleanly in-container; Step 2 — build_model(cfg) runs + PLModel instantiates in-container; Phase 3 — all 7 steps complete, smoke tests pass, no missing __init__.py.

---

Phase 4 — Export, Deployment & TensorRT Integration

Goal: ONNX export from tao-pytorch, then TRT engine builder + inference + evaluation in tao-deploy reusing the tao-core ExperimentConfig.

Steps 8–11: ONNX exporter (8 — task-specific input/output names, batch_size=-1 ⇒ dynamic batch); TRT engine builder (9 — subclass EngineBuilder or reuse ClassificationEngineBuilder; write specs/{gen_trt_engine,inference,evaluate}.yaml, same ExperimentConfig schema, augmentation.mean/std MUST match training); TRT inference → result.csv (10); TRT eval → results.json (11). See the Phase 4 reference for full code and the Phase 3+4 gate (3 in-container checks: imports, model build + forward, ONNX round-trip).

Module pitfalls: tao-pytorch and tao-deploy have separate hydra_runner and monitor_status — use the deploy versions in deploy scripts. ExperimentConfig comes from nvidia_tao_core in both (same schema/field paths).

Phase 3+4 gate: all three in-container checks pass (tao-pytorch imports + model + ONNX export; tao-deploy imports).

---

Phase 5 — Packaging & L0 Testing

Goal: register the model as a console_script in both repos and add unit tests.

Steps 12–15: register '<model_name>=...:main' in console_scripts of tao-pytorch/setup.py (12) and tao-deploy/setup.py (13, creating the deploy entrypoint/<model_name>.py via entrypoint_hydra); deploy L0 tests (14); trainer L0 tests — Trainer(..., fast_dev_run=True) + @pytest.mark.cv_unit @pytest.mark.<model_name> (15). See the Phase 5 reference for exact entry-point strings, code, and L0 test file lists.

Gate: entrypoints registered; pytest files exist and follow the marker convention. Do NOT stop — go directly to Phase 6.

---

Cross-Phase Data Flow & Consistency Verification

Before Docker testing, verify the chain train → export → gen_trt_engine → inference / evaluate (the *_model_latest.pth → .onnx → .engine artifact flow + the config fields each stage reads/writes — full diagram in references/cross-cutting.md).

Consistency checklist (verify before proceeding): self.checkpoint_filename → the *_latest.pth name evaluate.checkpoint / export.checkpoint reference; augmentation.mean/std identical across training spec, inference.yaml, evaluate.yaml, engine-builder preprocess_mode; ONNX input_names=['input'] / output_names=['output'] (detection/instance-seg use task-specific names); export.input_width/input_height match dataset.img_size; model.head.in_channels matches model_params_mapping.py; classes.txt at dataset.root_dir readable by both repos; all __init__.py exist (incl. scripts/__init__.py for get_subtasks() via pkgutil). Full paths: workflow-consistency.md.

---

Phase 6 — Container Testing & End-to-End Validation

Mandatory — start immediately after Phase 5. All TAO models ship as Docker images; code that only works outside a container is incomplete. Testing runs directly inside the TAO Toolkit container — no image build in the loop: mount → install source (setup.py develop) → run pytest / pylint / pydocstyle / flake8 directly. Use vanilla commands, NOT the ci/run_functional_tests.py / ci/run_static_tests.py wrappers (internal-mirror-only; public github.com/NVIDIA-TAO/ mirrors have no ci/ dir).

Steps 16–25: verify local image tags exist (16); unit tests for tao-core / tao-pytorch (-m cv_unit, --shm-size=16G) / tao-deploy (17–19); lint (20); wheels (21); end-to-end — train dry-run + export in one tao-pytorch session, then gen_trt_engine + inference + evaluate in one tao-deploy session (same session critical — --rm discards installs) (22); cross-check native vs TRT (23); debug shells (24); optional release images (25).

Full commands (every docker run, per-container env-vars, exact pytest / lint invocations + full-suite variants, the train/export/gen_trt_engine/inference/evaluate one-liner with all CLI overrides, the ci/ note, the fix-and-retest loop) and build scripts / runner patterns: see the Phase 6 references.

Phase 6 gate (Done criteria): tao-core / tao-pytorch / tao-deploy unit tests pass in their containers; static tests pass (or only legacy lint warnings); wheels build; end-to-end <model_name>_model_latest.pth → model.onnx → model.engine → non-empty result.csv + results.json; native vs TRT agree within tolerance.

---

Phase 7 — Optimization & Tuning (conditional)

Enter only if Phase 6 passes but accuracy / latency / size needs improvement. Ask the user for target metrics first.

Diagnostic categories: accuracy too low; TRT-vs-native gap; training too slow; inference too slow. Techniques: Step 27 — hyperparameter tuning; Step 28 — INT8 quantization (PTQ via torchao / modelopt, TRT INT8 + calibration); Step 29 — channel pruning + retrain; Step 30 — knowledge distillation; Step 31 — resolution tuning (TAO interpolates ViT positional embeddings automatically). See the Phase 7 reference for each category's checks, config blocks, YAML overrides, decision tree, and rationale.

---

Argument

$ARGUMENTS

If provided, interpret $ARGUMENTS as the HuggingFace model ID or URL to start Phase 1. If credentials or model short-name are not included, ask the user for them before proceeding.