winml catalog¶

Browse the curated winml-cli catalog of validated models and benchmarks.

When to use this¶

Use winml catalog to discover which HuggingFace models have been validated end-to-end by the winml-cli team — exported, quantized, compiled, and benchmarked on real Windows ML devices. It is the starting point when you want a model that is known to work before investing time in a custom build.

Synopsis¶

$ winml catalog [options]

Flags¶

Flag	Short	Type	Default	Description
`--model-type`		string	`null`	Filter the catalog by model architecture (case-insensitive). Examples: `bert`, `roberta`, `vit`.
`--task`	`-t`	string	`null`	Filter by HuggingFace task (case-insensitive). Examples: `text-classification`, `image-segmentation`.
`--ep/--execution-provider`		string	`null`	Filter by execution provider (e.g., `qnn`, `dml`). If not specified, shows all EPs.
`--device`	`-d`	string	`null`	Filter by target device (e.g., `npu`, `gpu`). If not specified, shows all devices.
`--output`	`-o`	path	`null`	Save the displayed results to a JSON file.
`--help`	`-h`	flag	—	Show help and exit.

winml catalog reads a local catalog bundled with the package — no network access is required.

How it works¶

The catalog is stored in winml/modelkit/data/hub_models.json and is loaded directly from the installed package data without any network call. Each catalog entry records the model ID, task, architecture type, and model size. Use --model-type, --task, --ep, or --device to narrow the displayed list. When --output is provided, the filtered results are written as indented JSON to the specified path.

Examples¶

# List all validated models in the catalog
$ winml catalog

+--- winml-cli Catalog  |  12 validated model(s) --------------------------+
|  Model                             Task                    Model Type     |
|  microsoft/resnet-50              image-classification    resnet          |
|  bert-base-uncased                fill-mask               bert            |
|  ProsusAI/finbert                 text-classification     bert            |
|  ...                                                                      |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Use  --ep  or  --device  to filter by execution provider or target device.

# Filter to BERT-family models only
$ winml catalog --model-type bert

# Filter by task — show only text-classification models
$ winml catalog --task text-classification

# Combine filters — BERT models for text classification
$ winml catalog --model-type bert --task text-classification

# Save filtered results to JSON for offline review
$ winml catalog --task image-classification --output results/image_catalog.json

Common pitfalls¶

The catalog reflects a point-in-time snapshot. Models listed in the catalog were validated against a specific version of winml-cli, ONNX Runtime, and the relevant EP driver. Accuracy and latency may differ on your hardware or with updated drivers.
--output only saves what was displayed. Combining a filter with --output saves the filtered list. There is no flag to dump the entire catalog in one call — omit all filters and add --output to do so.
A model not in the catalog can still be used with winml-cli. The catalog covers tested models; winml inspect and winml export work with any HuggingFace model that has a supported architecture, whether or not it appears in the catalog.