sft-cli 0.2.0

An interactive terminal browser for .safetensors files

sft

A fast, interactive terminal browser for .safetensors files. AI-agent friendly — run sft skill install to teach Claude, Cursor, and Codex CLI how to use it.

Why?

If you work with ML models, you've probably found yourself wondering "what's actually in this .safetensors file?" — the layer names, shapes, dtypes, sizes. Maybe you want to check if a model has the layers you expect, compare two checkpoints, or just explore an unfamiliar architecture.

sft lets you do that instantly from your terminal. No Python scripts, no notebooks, no waiting for tensors to load into memory. It reads only the file header, so even multi-gigabyte models open in milliseconds.

⚡ Installation

The recommended way to install is via uv:

uv tool install sft-cli

This makes sft available globally as a command.

Or install with pip:

pip install sft-cli

Usage

sft model.safetensors

That's it. Navigate with arrow keys, search with /, quit with q.

✨ Features

• Hierarchical browser — Tensors grouped by namespace (e.g., model.layers.0.attention)
• Instant startup — Header-only parsing, works on multi-GB files
• Search — Filter tensors by name with /
• Sort — By name, size, or rank with s
• Inspect — View full tensor details with Space
• Metadata — See embedded file metadata with m
• Read-only — Never touches your model files

⌨️ Keybindings

Key	Action
↑/↓	Navigate
←/→	Collapse/expand tree
Tab	Switch panels
/	Search
s	Cycle sort mode
Space	Tensor details
m	File metadata
f	Filter by dtype
q	Quit

Use with AI agents

sft ships with an installable agent skill that teaches AI coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex CLI, and anything supporting the ~/.agents/skills/ open standard) when and how to use the CLI:

sft skill install        # auto-detects installed agents
sft skill status         # see where it's installed and how
sft skill uninstall      # tidy up

The default install is a symlink (or directory junction on Windows) into each agent's well-known skills directory, so the skill auto-updates whenever you upgrade sft-cli (uv tool upgrade sft-cli / pip install -U sft-cli). Pass --mode copy if you'd rather have a frozen copy.

Every command also supports --json for reliable parsing — agents are taught to always pass --json when their output will be parsed.

License

MIT