hfo CLI reference — every flag with examples

Commands at a glance

Command	Description
`hfo`	Open the fullscreen TUI (Dashboard tab)
`hfo <repo>`	Open the TUI pre-filled on the Install tab
`hfo --view`	Print hardware profile, capacity score, tier, picks, HF search URLs
`hfo --list`	List installed models + orphan GGUFs on disk
`hfo --tune`	Persist the ~90% capacity Ollama env profile, restart the daemon
`hfo --backup <tag>`	Create a `.zip` backup of the model's folder
`hfo --restore <zip>`	Extract a backup, regenerate Modelfile if needed, re-register with Ollama
`hfo --delete <tag>`	Remove the tag from Ollama (shallow)
`hfo --delete <tag> --deep`	Remove the tag AND delete its on-disk folder
`hfo --launch <integration>`	Run `ollama launch <integration>` with the chosen model
`hfo --tab <name>`	Open the TUI on `dashboard` · `models` · `install` · `tune` · `help` · `settings`
`hfo --help` · `-h`	Print the full flag reference
`hfo --version`	Print `hfo vX.Y.Z · MIT · <author>`

Flags

Flag	Purpose
`--dir` · `-d`	Base directory for the install file browser. Default: `settings.modelDir` → `process.cwd()`
`--token` · `-t`	Hugging Face token for gated/private repos. Falls back to `$HF_TOKEN`
`--code` · `-c`	Mark the install as code-specialized (SYSTEM prompt tweak)
`--ctx`	Force context size. Default: auto — 8192 if fits in VRAM, else 4096
`--model`	Model tag to pass to `--launch`
`--deep`	Deep-delete (removes the tracked directory too) alongside `--delete`
`--no-fullscreen`	Disable the alt-screen buffer (helpful on legacy terminals)

Examples by task

Install a specific repo, no TUI

# Quick-confirm flow accepts on Enter. In CI, drop `--no-fullscreen` and pipe yes. $ hfo bartowski/Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Instruct-GGUF --code # Pre-select quant via --dir for a specific install location $ hfo bartowski/Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct-GGUF --dir ./models

Back up and restore models

# Creates a level-9 zip + sidecar metadata.json under settings/backups/<date>/ $ hfo --backup qwen2-5-coder-7b:q4-k-m # Reads the zip, regenerates Modelfile if missing, re-registers with Ollama $ hfo --restore ~/.config/hfo/backups/2026-04-23_11-48-25/qwen2-5-coder-7b_q4-k-m.zip

Tune Ollama env to ~90% of capacity

# Persists OLLAMA_FLASH_ATTENTION, OLLAMA_KV_CACHE_TYPE, OLLAMA_KEEP_ALIVE, # OLLAMA_NUM_PARALLEL, OLLAMA_MAX_LOADED_MODELS, OLLAMA_MAX_QUEUE # via setx (Windows) / launchctl + ~/.zprofile (macOS) / ~/.profile + systemd (Linux) $ hfo --tune

Launch a coding agent with a local model

$ hfo --launch claude --model llama3.1:8b $ hfo --launch codex --model qwen2.5-coder:7b-q6-k $ hfo --launch copilot --model deepseek-coder:6.7b-instruct

Supported launch targets: claude, cline, codex, copilot, droid, hermes, kimi, opencode, openclaw, pi, vscode. Unsupported targets on your installed Ollama version are probed at runtime against ollama launch --help.

List and clean up

$ hfo --list # Shallow: removes the tag from Ollama but keeps files on disk for re-registration $ hfo --delete old-tag:q4 # Deep: also wipes the tracked directory $ hfo --delete old-tag:q4 --deep

Exit codes

0 — success
1 — generic runtime error (message on stderr)
2 — invalid flag / unknown launch target
130 — interrupted by Ctrl+C (SIGINT)
143 — terminated by SIGTERM