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Hugging Face Spaces settings

This section details how to configure and deploy Argilla on Hugging Face Spaces. It covers:

  • Persistent storage
  • How to deploy Argilla under a Hugging Face Organization
  • How to configure and disable HF OAuth access
  • How to use Private Spaces

Looking to get started easily or deploy Argilla with the Python SDK?

If you just discovered Argilla and want to get started quickly, go to the Quickstart guide.

Persistent storage

In the Space creation UI, persistent storage is set to Small PAID, which is a paid service, charged per hour of usage.

Spaces get restarted due to maintainance, inactivity, and every time you change your Spaces settings. Persistent storage enables Argilla to save to disk your datasets and configurations across restarts.

Ephimeral FREE persistent storage

Not setting persistent storage to Small means that you will loose your data when the Space restarts.

If you plan to use the Argilla Space beyond testing, it's highly recommended to set persistent storage to Small.

If you just want to quickly test or use Argilla for a few hours with the risk of loosing your datasets, choose Ephemeral FREE. Ephemeral FREE means your datasets and configuration will not be saved to disk, when the Space is restarted your datasets, workspaces, and users will be lost.

If you want to disable the persistence storage warning, you can set the environment variable ARGILLA_SHOW_HUGGINGFACE_SPACE_PERSISTENT_STORAGE_WARNING=false

Read this if you have datasets and want to enable persistent storage

If you want to enable persistent storage Small PAID and you have created datasets, users, or workspaces, follow this process:

  • First, make a local or remote copy of your datasets, following the Import and Export guide. This is the most important step, because changing the settings of your Space leads to a restart and thus a data loss.
  • If you have created users (not signed in with Hugging Face login), consider storing a copy of users following the manage users guide.
  • Once you have stored all your data safely, go to you Space Settings Tab and select Small.
  • Your Space will be restarted and existing data will be lost. From now on, all the new data you create in Argilla will be kept safely
  • Recover your data, by following the above mentioned guides.

How to configure and disable OAuth access

By default, Argilla Spaces are configured with Hugging Face OAuth, in the following way:

  • Any Hugging Face user that can see your Space, can use the Sign in button, join as an annotator, and contribute to the datasets available under the argilla workspace. This workspace is created during the deployment process.
  • These users can only explore and annotate datasets in the argilla workspace but can't perform any critical operation like create, delete, update, or configure datasets. By default, any other workspace you create, won't be visible to these users.

To restrict access or change the default behaviour, there's two options:

Set your Space to private. This is especially useful if your Space is under an organization. This will only allow members within your organization to see and join your Argilla space. It can also be used for personal, solo projects.

Modify the .oauth.yml configuration file. You can find and modify this file under the Files tab of your Space. The default file looks like this:

# Change to `false` to disable HF oauth integration
#enabled: false

providers:
  - name: huggingface

# Allowed workspaces must exists
allowed_workspaces:
  - name: argilla
You can modify two things:

  • Uncomment enabled: false to completely disable the Sign in with Hugging Face. If you disable it make sure to set the USERNAME and PASSWORD Space secrets to be able to login as an owner.
  • Change the list of allowed workspaces.

For example if you want to let users join a new workspace community-initiative:

allowed_workspaces:
  - name: argilla
  - name: community-initiative

How to deploy Argilla under a Hugging Face Organization

Creating an Argilla Space within an organization is useful for several scenarios:

  • You want to only enable members of your organization to join your Space. You can achieve this by setting your Space to private.
  • You want manage the Space together with other users (e.g., Space settings, etc.). Note that if you just want to manage your Argilla datasets, workspaces, you can achieve this by adding other Argilla owner roles to your Argilla Server.
  • More generally, you want to make available your space under an organization/community umbrella.

The steps are very similar the Quickstart guide with one important difference:

Enable Persistent Storage SMALL

Not setting persistent storage to Small means that you will loose your data when the Space restarts.

For Argilla Spaces with many users, it's strongly recommended to set persistent storage to Small.

How to use Private Spaces

Setting your Space visibility to private can be useful if:

  • You want to work on your personal, solo project.
  • You want your Argilla to be available only to members of the organization where you deploy the Argilla Space.

You can set the visibility of the Space during the Space creation process or afterwards under the Settings Tab.

To use the Python SDK with private Spaces you need to specify your HF_TOKEN which can be found here, when creating the client:

import argilla as rg

HF_TOKEN = "..."

client = rg.Argilla(
    api_url="<api_url>",
    api_key="<api_key>",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {HF_TOKEN}"}
)

Space Secrets overview

There's two optional secrets to set up the USERNAME and PASSWORD of the owner of the Argilla Space. Remember that, by default Argilla Spaces are configured with a Sign in with Hugging Face button, which is also used to grant an owner to the creator of the Space for personal spaces.

The USERNAME and PASSWORD are only useful in a couple of scenarios:

In summary, when setting up a Space:

Creating a Space under your personal account

If you are creating the Space under your personal account, don't insert any value for USERNAME and PASSWORD. Once you launch the Space you will be able to Sign in with your Hugging Face username and the owner role.

Creating a Space under an organization

If you are creating the Space under an organization make sure to insert your Hugging Face username in the secret USERNAME. In this way, you'll be able to Sign in with your Hugging Face user.