Instructions to use HuggingFaceTB/SmolLM3-3B with libraries, inference providers, notebooks, and local apps. Follow these links to get started.

Libraries

How to use HuggingFaceTB/SmolLM3-3B with Transformers:

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

pipe = pipeline("text-generation", model="HuggingFaceTB/SmolLM3-3B")
messages = [
    {"role": "user", "content": "Who are you?"},
]
pipe(messages)

# Load model directly
from transformers import AutoTokenizer, AutoModelForCausalLM

tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained("HuggingFaceTB/SmolLM3-3B")
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained("HuggingFaceTB/SmolLM3-3B")
messages = [
    {"role": "user", "content": "Who are you?"},
]
inputs = tokenizer.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(tokenizer.decode(outputs[0][inputs["input_ids"].shape[-1]:]))

Notebooks
Google Colab
Kaggle
Local Apps

vLLM

How to use HuggingFaceTB/SmolLM3-3B with vLLM:

Install from pip and serve model

# Install vLLM from pip:
pip install vllm
# Start the vLLM server:
vllm serve "HuggingFaceTB/SmolLM3-3B"
# 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/SmolLM3-3B",
		"messages": [
			{
				"role": "user",
				"content": "What is the capital of France?"
			}
		]
	}'

Use Docker

docker model run hf.co/HuggingFaceTB/SmolLM3-3B

SGLang

How to use HuggingFaceTB/SmolLM3-3B 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/SmolLM3-3B" \
    --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/SmolLM3-3B",
		"messages": [
			{
				"role": "user",
				"content": "What is the capital of France?"
			}
		]
	}'

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/SmolLM3-3B" \
        --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/SmolLM3-3B",
		"messages": [
			{
				"role": "user",
				"content": "What is the capital of France?"
			}
		]
	}'

Docker Model Runner
How to use HuggingFaceTB/SmolLM3-3B with Docker Model Runner:
```
docker model run hf.co/HuggingFaceTB/SmolLM3-3B
```

chat template: tool call fix?

#16

by sbrandeis HF Staff - opened Jul 10, 2025

base: refs/heads/main

←

from: refs/pr/16

Discussion Files changed

-3

sbrandeis

Jul 10, 2025

TL;DR

The role displayed for a tool call is user - I assume that is a mistake and the chat template should use the provided role instead (tool)

This PR is untested, feel free to disregard if not relevant

chat template: tool call fix?c8598251

eliebak

Jul 16, 2025

cc @edbeeching @lewtun @cmpatino

cmpatino

Hugging Face Smol Models Research org Jul 17, 2025

•

edited Jul 17, 2025

This is a good point, and was a conversation we had while designing the chat template.

Leaving the tool call as user was a design choice we made during the SFT phase of training to mask the loss for the tool role. Our SFT pipeline already masked the loss for the user role, so mapping the tool call to the user role enables masking the loss through the chat template.

This mapping had a limited impact on BFCL scores, so we decided to continue with that approach.

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