Framework-agnostic utilities for loading and running ML models in the browser via WebGPU/WASM.
If you've ever built a browser-ML demo, you know the drill: copy 150 lines of Web Worker boilerplate from the last project, wire up postMessage, add progress reporting, handle the GPU vanishing mid-inference, and pray the model is cached so your user doesn't wait 3 minutes. Every. Single. Time.
This library does that part for you. It wraps @huggingface/transformers with a sane API and handles the ugly bits: device detection, model caching, token streaming, KV-cache management, and GPU recovery.
npm install webml-kitimport { ModelClient } from 'webml-kit';
const client = new ModelClient();
// or with an explicit worker path:
// const client = new ModelClient(new URL('webml-kit/worker', import.meta.url));
// What can this machine do?
const device = await client.detect();
console.log(device.backend); // 'webgpu' or 'wasm' or 'cpu'
console.log(device.gpu?.vendor); // 'apple'
console.log(device.recommendedDtype); // 'q4'
// Load a model
await client.load({
task: 'text-generation',
modelId: 'onnx-community/Bonsai-1.7B-ONNX',
dtype: 'q4',
onProgress: ({ percent }) => console.log(`Loading: ${percent}%`),
});
// Stream tokens as they're generated
for await (const { token, tps } of client.stream('Tell me a joke')) {
process.stdout.write(token);
}Figures out what your user's machine can handle and picks a reasonable quantization level:
import { detectDevice, canRun } from 'webml-kit';
const info = await detectDevice();
// { backend: 'webgpu', gpu: { vendor: 'apple', vram: 8589934592, vramFormatted: '8.0 GB' }, recommendedDtype: 'fp16' }
const { ok, reason } = await canRun('4GB'); // human-readable
const same = await canRun(4_000_000_000); // raw bytes — same resultSearch the Hugging Face Hub for models that work with webml-kit. Only returns models tagged with transformers.js, so everything listed runs out of the box:
import { searchModels, listModelsForTask, trendingModels, listWebGPUModels } from 'webml-kit';
// Search by keyword
const results = await searchModels({ query: 'whisper', task: 'automatic-speech-recognition' });
// Top models for a task
const textModels = await listModelsForTask('text-generation', 5);
// What's trending right now
const hot = await trendingModels(5);
// Only from known WebGPU-friendly orgs (onnx-community, Xenova)
const webgpu = await listWebGPUModels({ task: 'text-generation' });The worst UX in browser ML is showing "downloading 2GB..." to someone who already has the model. Now you can check:
import { isCached, listCachedModels, getCacheSize, clearCache } from 'webml-kit';
if (await isCached('onnx-community/Bonsai-1.7B-ONNX')) {
// Skip the progress bar entirely
}
const models = await listCachedModels();
// [{ modelId: 'onnx-community/Bonsai-1.7B-ONNX', size: '412.0 MB', sizeBytes: 432013312 }]
await clearCache('onnx-community/Bonsai-1.7B-ONNX'); // Free storage on mobileA proper AsyncIterable instead of raw postMessage callbacks. Tracks tokens-per-second and time-to-first-token:
for await (const event of client.stream('Hello!')) {
console.log(event);
// { token: 'World', tps: 38.5, numTokens: 12, timeToFirstToken: 145 }
}
// Or grab everything at once:
const { text, tps, numTokens } = await client.generate('Hello!');GPUs disappear. It happens: TDR resets, VRAM pressure, mobile browsers reclaiming resources. Without handling this, the user has to reload the page. This recovers automatically with backoff:
import { GPURecovery } from 'webml-kit';
const recovery = new GPURecovery({ maxRetries: 3, baseDelayMs: 1000 });
recovery.on('lost', ({ reason }) => showBanner('GPU lost: ' + reason));
recovery.on('recovered', ({ adapter }) => console.log('Back online'));
recovery.on('failed', () => showFallbackMessage());Not just text generation. Every task @huggingface/transformers supports works through the same API:
// Classify an image
const labels = await client.run('image-classification', imageUrl);
// [{ label: 'tabby cat', score: 0.98 }]
// Transcribe audio
const { text } = await client.run('automatic-speech-recognition', audioBlob);
// Get embeddings
const vectors = await client.run('feature-extraction', 'Hello world');
// Detect objects
const objects = await client.run('object-detection', imageBlob);
// Translate, summarize, caption images, answer questions,
// classify text, extract entities, estimate depth, segment images| Method | What it does |
|---|---|
detect() |
Returns device capabilities and recommended dtype |
load(options) |
Downloads and initializes a model pipeline |
stream(input, options?) |
Returns an async iterator of tokens |
generate(input, options?) |
Generates text, waits for completion |
run(task, input, options?) |
Runs any pipeline task |
interrupt() |
Stops an in-progress generation |
reset() |
Clears the KV cache (new conversation) |
dispose(modelKey?) |
Frees model memory |
isLoaded(task, modelId) |
Checks if a specific model is ready |
terminate() |
Kills the worker entirely |
on(event, listener) |
Listens for progress, ready, error, device-lost, device-recovered |
These work without a ModelClient — useful for pre-flight checks:
| Function | What it does |
|---|---|
detectDevice() |
Backend detection + GPU info + dtype recommendation |
checkWebGPU() |
Boolean: is WebGPU available? |
canRun(bytes) |
Can a model of this size fit in VRAM? |
isCached(modelId) |
Is this model already downloaded? |
listCachedModels() |
What's in the cache? |
clearCache(modelId?) |
Delete cached model files |
getCacheSize() |
Total bytes used by cached models |
parseSize(input) |
Convert '4GB' / '512MB' to bytes |
formatSize(bytes) |
Convert bytes to '4.0 GB' / '512.0 MB' |
searchModels(options?) |
Search HF Hub for transformers.js-compatible models |
listModelsForTask(task) |
Top models for a specific pipeline task |
trendingModels(limit?) |
What's trending on HF Hub right now |
listWebGPUModels(options?) |
Models from known WebGPU-friendly orgs |
getModelInfo(modelId) |
Detailed info about a specific model |
| Task | Streaming | Default model |
|---|---|---|
text-generation |
yes | onnx-community/Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct-ONNX |
text-classification |
no | Xenova/distilbert-base-uncased-finetuned-sst-2-english |
image-classification |
no | Xenova/vit-base-patch16-224 |
object-detection |
no | Xenova/detr-resnet-50 |
automatic-speech-recognition |
no | onnx-community/whisper-tiny.en |
text-to-speech |
no | Xenova/speecht5_tts |
translation |
no | Xenova/nllb-200-distilled-600M |
summarization |
no | Xenova/distilbart-cnn-6-6 |
feature-extraction |
no | Xenova/all-MiniLM-L6-v2 |
image-to-text |
no | Xenova/vit-gpt2-image-captioning |
zero-shot-classification |
no | Xenova/mobilebert-uncased-mnli |
fill-mask |
no | Xenova/bert-base-uncased |
question-answering |
no | Xenova/distilbert-base-uncased-distilled-squad |
token-classification |
no | Xenova/bert-base-NER |
depth-estimation |
no | Xenova/depth-anything-small-hf |
image-segmentation |
no | Xenova/detr-resnet-50-panoptic |
Your App (main thread) Web Worker
-------------------------- ---------------------------
ModelClient model-worker.ts
.load() --- postMessage --> pipeline() from @hf/transformers
.stream() <-- tokens -------- TextStreamer + KV cache
.run() <-- result -------- One-shot inference
.interrupt() -- signal ------> InterruptableStoppingCriteria
TokenStream (AsyncIterable) Singleton pipeline cache
GPURecovery (auto-reconnect) WebGPU device management
- Chrome 113+, Edge 113+, or Safari 18+ (falls back to WASM on older browsers)
- Node.js 18+ (WASM only, no WebGPU)
@huggingface/transformers>= 4.0.0 as a peer dependency
MIT — Hemanth HM