Generated banner for Hf Cloud Python Env Setup
Generated logo for Hf Cloud Python Env Setup

Hf Cloud Python Env Setup

Hugging FaceOfficialPublished by Hugging Face

  • Skill
  • Workflow
  • Cloud and DevOps
  • Apache-2.0
  • Low risk
  • Has scripts

From the author

Set up an isolated Python environment for SageMaker / AWS work, with the right Python version and current boto3. Use this skill whenever Python code will be executed for a SageMaker deployment, training job, or any AWS automation — including when about to run `pip install`, when about to invoke `boto3`, when creating or activating a virtualenv, or when the user asks to "set up the environment". Never use system Python and never `pip install` into it. Always isolate. This skill prevents the most common failure modes: wrong Python version, dependency conflicts, and stale SDKs.
— the description by Hugging Face

AutoGineer summary

Written by AutoGineer from the skill’s own files, not by the author

This skill provides a robust, repeatable workflow for setting up isolated Python environments specifically tailored for SageMaker and AWS automation. By enforcing strict isolation from system Python and utilizing current SDK versions, it eliminates common deployment failures caused by dependency conflicts, stale libraries, or incompatible Python versions. The workflow supports both automated script-based setup and manual configuration, ensuring consistent execution across macOS, Linux, and Windows.

What it does

  • Creates isolated virtual environments using Python 3.10-3.12.
  • Automates the installation of current boto3 and AWS CLI packages.
  • Provides idempotent scripts for environment initialization and verification.
  • Offers guidance on managing dependencies for SageMaker-specific projects.
  • Standardizes the invocation of Python interpreters to avoid path-related errors.
  • Includes diagnostic tools to verify installed package versions.

When to use it

  • Before starting any SageMaker deployment, training job, or AWS automation task.
  • When encountering 'module not found' or dependency resolution errors in existing projects.
  • When preparing a local development environment to interact with AWS APIs.
  • When upgrading or troubleshooting SageMaker SDK or boto3 integrations.

Advantages

  • Prevents pollution of system-level Python installations.
  • Reduces deployment failures by ensuring up-to-date API surfaces.
  • Ensures cross-platform consistency for deployment scripts.
  • Simplifies dependency management by avoiding unnecessary version pinning.
  • Provides clear, explicit paths for interpreter invocation.

Usage examples

“Set up the environment for my new SageMaker project.”
The agent executes the setup script to create a .venv directory with Python 3.12 and installs the required AWS SDKs.
“Check if my boto3 version is current.”
The agent runs the version check script within the isolated environment to report the installed boto3 and botocore versions.
“I am getting a dependency error when running my deployment script.”
The agent recreates the isolated environment using the standard setup workflow to resolve potential conflicts and ensure a clean state.

Install

  1. Download the skill as a ZIP:

    https://autogineer.com/agent-skills/huggingface/hf-cloud-python-env-setup/download
  2. Unzip it into the cross-client skills folder of your project:

    mkdir -p .agents/skills && unzip hf-cloud-python-env-setup.zip -d .agents/skills

Documentation by Hugging Face

Python Environment Setup for SageMaker

Most SageMaker deployment failures that look like AWS problems are actually Python environment problems: wrong Python version, broken dependency resolution, stale SDK that doesn't know about a current API. This skill makes env setup boring and correct.

Core rules

  1. Never use the system Python. Always work inside an isolated environment.

  2. Pin the Python version, not the package versions. Use 3.10, 3.11, or 3.12. Avoid 3.13+ — ML libraries lag on wheel availability and dependency resolution breaks in confusing ways.

  3. Install the latest of each package. Don't defensively pin boto3 or awscli. Newer ones have current API surfaces and security fixes. Only pin if the user explicitly requires a specific version.

  4. Check installed versions correctly. Use importlib.metadata.version("package-name"), never module.__version__. The latter is inconsistent across packages.

  5. The bundled scripts use boto3 directly. The SageMaker Python SDK is a valid alternative — see "boto3 vs the SageMaker SDK" below.

boto3 vs the SageMaker SDK

The bundled deploy scripts (deploy.py, deploy_async.py, teardown.py) use boto3 directly and read image URIs from AWS's published Deep Learning Containers catalog. That fits this workflow's explicit-stages design — each skill produces a concrete value (region, role ARN, image URI) that the next one consumes — and boto3 is the stable underlying API client.

The SageMaker Python SDK (v3) is fine to use when the user prefers it or their project already does. Since PR #5960 (June 2026), ModelBuilder auto-routes HuggingFace models to the current containers (text-generation → HuggingFace vLLM, multimodal → vLLM-Omni, embeddings → TEI). Don't avoid the SDK over stale-image or wrong-container concerns — that routing is fixed.

Two specific SDK cases that still need care:

  • Generative rerankers: the SDK routes the text-ranking task to TEI unconditionally, which is wrong for causal-LM rerankers like Qwen3-Reranker — those need vLLM (see hf-cloud-serving-image-selection). Pass the container explicitly for these models.

  • SSO assumed-role credentials: v3 has had credential-resolution regressions in ModelTrainer / FrameworkProcessor under SSO profiles. If SDK calls fail with credential errors while aws sts get-caller-identity succeeds in the same shell, suspect this rather than your AWS config.

If you use the SDK, install it into the isolated env like everything else (.venv/bin/python -m pip install sagemaker). The bundled scripts don't require it.

How to set up

The fastest path is the bundled script — it's Python, so it runs the same on Windows, macOS, and Linux:

python3 scripts/setup_env.py        # macOS / Linux
python  scripts/setup_env.py        # Windows (PowerShell / cmd)

This script detects uv and uses it if available (faster), falls back to the stdlib venv module, creates .venv/ with Python 3.12 (override: python3 setup_env.py .venv 3.11), refuses unsupported Python versions, installs from the bundled requirements.txt, and is idempotent. It also prints the correct interpreter path for the host OS (see below).

Manual equivalent:

# Preferred: uv
uv venv --python 3.12 .venv
uv pip install --python .venv/bin/python --upgrade boto3 awscli   # Windows: .venv\Scripts\python.exe

# Fallback: stdlib venv
python3.12 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/python -m pip install --upgrade pip boto3 awscli

After setup, invoke the env's Python explicitly rather than activating the venv. The interpreter path differs by platform:

.venv/bin/python deploy.py            # macOS / Linux
.venv\Scripts\python.exe deploy.py    # Windows

This works the same in scripts, interactive shells, and agent tool calls. The rest of this skill writes .venv/bin/python for brevity — on Windows substitute .venv\Scripts\python.exe.

Verifying

.venv/bin/python scripts/check_versions.py

Prints versions of boto3, botocore, awscli. Uses importlib.metadata.version() so it works on every package, including ones without __version__. Pass arbitrary names: ... check_versions.py transformers huggingface_hub.

Deployment-specific extras

Default requirements.txt covers SageMaker orchestration. Some deployments need extras (huggingface_hub for model inspection, transformers for tokenizer validation). Add these to a deployment-specific requirements file in the project, install with the env's Python, don't pin unless there's a reason.

Common pitfalls

Mysterious pip install resolution errors Almost always Python 3.13+ trying to install packages without wheels yet, or installing into a polluted system Python. Recreate at 3.12: delete .venv and re-run python3 setup_env.py .venv 3.12 (the script recreates the env when the version doesn't match, so you can also just re-run it).

pip install succeeded but the script says "module not found" You installed into a different interpreter than the one running the script. Always invoke Python explicitly: .venv/bin/python -m pip install ... and .venv/bin/python deploy.py.

Inline python -c "..." one-liners fail in PowerShell PowerShell's quoting rules mangle nested/escaped quotes in inline Python. Don't debug the quoting — write the snippet to a small .py file and run that. (All bundled helpers are files for exactly this reason.)

boto3 call fails with "unknown parameter" Your boto3 is older than the API surface. Upgrade with .venv/bin/python -m pip install --upgrade boto3. Don't downgrade the script to match an old version.

sagemaker (the SDK) installed but the bundled scripts fail The bundled scripts don't use the SDK — they only need boto3/awscli from requirements.txt. Installing sagemaker alongside is harmless, but it doesn't replace the requirements install.

Files

LICENSE

                                 Apache License
                           Version 2.0, January 2004
                        http://www.apache.org/licenses/

   TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR USE, REPRODUCTION, AND DISTRIBUTION

   1. Definitions.

      "License" shall mean the terms and conditions for use, reproduction,
      and distribution as defined by Sections 1 through 9 of this document.

      "Licensor" shall mean the copyright owner or entity authorized by
      the copyright owner that is granting the License.

      "Legal Entity" shall mean the union of the acting entity and all
      other entities that control, are controlled by, or are under common
      control with that entity. For the purposes of this definition,
      "control" means (i) the power, direct or indirect, to cause the
      direction or management of such entity, whether by contract or
      otherwise, or (ii) ownership of fifty percent (50%) or more of the
      outstanding shares, or (iii) beneficial ownership of such entity.

      "You" (or "Your") shall mean an individual or Legal Entity
      exercising permissions granted by this License.

      "Source" form shall mean the preferred form for making modifications,
      including but not limited to software source code, documentation
      source, and configuration files.

      "Object" form shall mean any form resulting from mechanical
      transformation or translation of a Source form, including but
      not limited to compiled object code, generated documentation,
      and conversions to other media types.

      "Work" shall mean the work of authorship, whether in Source or
      Object form, made available under the License, as indicated by a
      copyright notice that is included in or attached to the work
      (an example is provided in the Appendix below).

      "Derivative Works" shall mean any work, whether in Source or Object
      form, that is based on (or derived from) the Work and for which the
      editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications
      represent, as a whole, an original work of authorship. For the purposes
      of this License, Derivative Works shall not include works that remain
      separable from, or merely link (or bind by name) to the interfaces of,
      the Work and Derivative Works thereof.

      "Contribution" shall mean any work of authorship, including
      the original version of the Work and any modifications or additions
      to that Work or Derivative Works thereof, that is intentionally
      submitted to Licensor for inclusion in the Work by the copyright owner
      or by an individual or Legal Entity authorized to submit on behalf of
      the copyright owner. For the purposes of this definition, "submitted"
      means any form of electronic, verbal, or written communication sent
      to the Licensor or its representatives, including but not limited to
      communication on electronic mailing lists, source code control systems,
      and issue tracking systems that are managed by, or on behalf of, the
      Licensor for the purpose of discussing and improving the Work, but
      excluding communication that is conspicuously marked or otherwise
      designated in writing by the copyright owner as "Not a Contribution."

      "Contributor" shall mean Licensor and any individual or Legal Entity
      on behalf of whom a Contribution has been received by Licensor and
      subsequently incorporated within the Work.

   2. Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of
      this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual,
      worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable
      copyright license to reproduce, prepare Derivative Works of,
      publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute the
      Work and such Derivative Works in Source or Object form.

   3. Grant of Patent License. Subject to the terms and conditions of
      this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual,
      worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable
      (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made,
      use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Work,
      where such license applies only to those patent claims licensable
      by such Contributor that are necessarily infringed by their
      Contribution(s) alone or by combination of their Contribution(s)
      with the Work to which such Contribution(s) was submitted. If You
      institute patent litigation against any entity (including a
      cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work
      or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct
      or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses
      granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate
      as of the date such litigation is filed.

   4. Redistribution. You may reproduce and distribute copies of the
      Work or Derivative Works thereof in any medium, with or without
      modifications, and in Source or Object form, provided that You
      meet the following conditions:

      (a) You must give any other recipients of the Work or
          Derivative Works a copy of this License; and

      (b) You must cause any modified files to carry prominent notices
          stating that You changed the files; and

      (c) You must retain, in the Source form of any Derivative Works
          that You distribute, all copyright, patent, trademark, and
          attribution notices from the Source form of the Work,
          excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of
          the Derivative Works; and

      (d) If the Work includes a "NOTICE" text file as part of its
          distribution, then any Derivative Works that You distribute must
          include a readable copy of the attribution notices contained
          within such NOTICE file, excluding those notices that do not
          pertain to any part of the Derivative Works, in at least one
          of the following places: within a NOTICE text file distributed
          as part of the Derivative Works; within the Source form or
          documentation, if provided along with the Derivative Works; or,
          within a display generated by the Derivative Works, if and
          wherever such third-party notices normally appear. The contents
          of the NOTICE file are for informational purposes only and
          do not modify the License. You may add Your own attribution
          notices within Derivative Works that You distribute, alongside
          or as an addendum to the NOTICE text from the Work, provided
          that such additional attribution notices cannot be construed
          as modifying the License.

      You may add Your own copyright statement to Your modifications and
      may provide additional or different license terms and conditions
      for use, reproduction, or distribution of Your modifications, or
      for any such Derivative Works as a whole, provided Your use,
      reproduction, and distribution of the Work otherwise complies with
      the conditions stated in this License.

   5. Submission of Contributions. Unless You explicitly state otherwise,
      any Contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the Work
      by You to the Licensor shall be under the terms and conditions of
      this License, without any additional terms or conditions.
      Notwithstanding the above, nothing herein shall supersede or modify
      the terms of any separate license agreement you may have executed
      with Licensor regarding such Contributions.

   6. Trademarks. This License does not grant permission to use the trade
      names, trademarks, service marks, or product names of the Licensor,
      except as required for reasonable and customary use in describing the
      origin of the Work and reproducing the content of the NOTICE file.

   7. Disclaimer of Warranty. Unless required by applicable law or
      agreed to in writing, Licensor provides the Work (and each
      Contributor provides its Contributions) on an "AS IS" BASIS,
      WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or
      implied, including, without limitation, any warranties or conditions
      of TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, or FITNESS FOR A
      PARTICULAR PURPOSE. You are solely responsible for determining the
      appropriateness of using or redistributing the Work and assume any
      risks associated with Your exercise of permissions under this License.

   8. Limitation of Liability. In no event and under no legal theory,
      whether in tort (including negligence), contract, or otherwise,
      unless required by applicable law (such as deliberate and grossly
      negligent acts) or agreed to in writing, shall any Contributor be
      liable to You for damages, including any direct, indirect, special,
      incidental, or consequential damages of any character arising as a
      result of this License or out of the use or inability to use the
      Work (including but not limited to damages for loss of goodwill,
      work stoppage, computer failure or malfunction, or any and all
      other commercial damages or losses), even if such Contributor
      has been advised of the possibility of such damages.

   9. Accepting Warranty or Additional Liability. While redistributing
      the Work or Derivative Works thereof, You may choose to offer,
      and charge a fee for, acceptance of support, warranty, indemnity,
      or other liability obligations and/or rights consistent with this
      License. However, in accepting such obligations, You may act only
      on Your own behalf and on Your sole responsibility, not on behalf
      of any other Contributor, and only if You agree to indemnify,
      defend, and hold each Contributor harmless for any liability
      incurred by, or claims asserted against, such Contributor by reason
      of your accepting any such warranty or additional liability.

   END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS

   APPENDIX: How to apply the Apache License to your work.

      To apply the Apache License to your work, attach the following
      boilerplate notice, with the fields enclosed by brackets "[]"
      replaced with your own identifying information. (Don't include
      the brackets!)  The text should be enclosed in the appropriate
      comment syntax for the file format. We also recommend that a
      file or class name and description of purpose be included on the
      same "printed page" as the copyright notice for easier
      identification within third-party archives.

   Copyright [yyyy] [name of copyright owner]

   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.

Requirements and compatibility

Works with: Claude Code, Claude apps, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Kiro, OpenCode, Goose, Amp, Roo Code, JetBrains Junie, Factory Droid, Devin (ex-Windsurf), Mistral Vibe, OpenHands, Letta

“Works with” means the tool reads the open Agent Skills format; a skill written for one tool may use features others lack.

Needs: Needs Python

Security

What our scanner noticed· Low risk

  • Instructions that use the network
  • Scripts that your agent may run

This skill includes scripts that your agent may run. Read them before you use it.

A static scan is not a guarantee. Skills are third-party content: review a skill before you let an agent use it.

Attribution and licence

Published by
Hugging Face
Publisher
Hugging Face (Official)
Source
huggingface/skills · skills/hf-cloud-python-env-setup · commit 25910b3
Licence
Apache License 2.0 (redistribution allowed)
  • LICENSE (added by AutoGineer from LICENSE)
  • ATTRIBUTION.md (written by AutoGineer)
Synced

AutoGineer is not affiliated with or endorsed by Hugging Face or Hugging Face.

Download ZIP

The ZIP holds the skill’s files, its licence files and an ATTRIBUTION.md. Download hf-cloud-python-env-setup.zip