Hugging Face AI Updates: November 1, 2026

1. hf-xet v1.8.0 Adds Experimental Direct-to-S3 Xorb Uploads

Hugging Face released hf-xet v1.8.0, the client library behind Xet-backed uploads and downloads on the Hub, on October 30. The headline change is an experimental upload path that sends xorbs, the bundles of deduplicated chunks Xet storage writes, straight to S3 using short-lived upload grants issued by the CAS service, which validates each xorb before storing it. The server is enabling the path gradually, so other uploads keep using the existing route for now. Teams behind egress firewalls need to allow s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com, plus s3.eu-west-3.amazonaws.com for repos stored in the EU. If S3 is unreachable, uploads fall back to the existing path, and setting HF_XET_CLIENT_LEGACY_DIRECT_XORB_UPLOAD=1 forces the old path every time. The release also fixes two bugs: downloads no longer request reconstruction data past the end of a file when its size is known in advance, and a partially written file is no longer published after a write error. Source