How to run gpt-oss with Transformers

The Transformers library by Hugging Face provides a flexible way to load and run large language models locally or on a server. This guide will walk you through running OpenAI gpt-oss-20b or OpenAI gpt-oss-120b using Transformers, either with a high-level pipeline or via low-level generate calls with raw token IDs.

We'll cover the use of OpenAI gpt-oss-20b or OpenAI gpt-oss-120b with the high-level pipeline abstraction, low-level `generate` calls, and serving models locally with `transformers serve`, with in a way compatible with the Responses API.

In this guide we’ll run through various optimised ways to run the gpt-oss models via Transformers.

Bonus: You can also fine-tune models via transformers, check out our fine-tuning guide here.

Pick your model

Both gpt-oss models are available on Hugging Face:

openai/gpt-oss-20b
- ~16GB VRAM requirement when using MXFP4
- Great for single high-end consumer GPUs
openai/gpt-oss-120b
- Requires ≥60GB VRAM or multi-GPU setup
- Ideal for H100-class hardware

Both are MXFP4 quantized by default. Please, note that MXFP4 is supported in Hopper or later architectures. This includes data center GPUs such as H100 or GB200, as well as the latest RTX 50xx family of consumer cards.

If you use bfloat16 instead of MXFP4, memory consumption will be larger (~48 GB for the 20b parameter model).

Quick setup

Install dependencies
It’s recommended to create a fresh Python environment. Install transformers, accelerate, as well as the Triton kernels for MXFP4 compatibility:

pip install -U transformers accelerate torch triton==3.4 kernels

(Optional) Enable multi-GPU
If you’re running large models, use Accelerate or torchrun to handle device mapping automatically.

Create an Open AI Responses / Chat Completions endpoint

To launch a server, simply use the transformers serve CLI command:

transformers serve

The simplest way to interact with the server is through the transformers chat CLI

transformers chat localhost:8000 --model-name-or-path openai/gpt-oss-20b

or by sending an HTTP request with cURL, e.g.

curl -X POST http://localhost:8000/v1/responses -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"messages": [{"role": "system", "content": "hello"}], "temperature": 0.9, "max_tokens": 1000, "stream": true, "model": "openai/gpt-oss-20b"}'

Additional use cases, like integrating transformers serve with Cursor and other tools, are detailed in the documentation.

Quick inference with pipeline

The easiest way to run the gpt-oss models is with the Transformers high-level pipeline API:

from transformers import pipeline
 
generator = pipeline(
    "text-generation",
    model="openai/gpt-oss-20b",
    torch_dtype="auto",
    device_map="auto"  # Automatically place on available GPUs
)
 
messages = [
    {"role": "user", "content": "Explain what MXFP4 quantization is."},
]
 
result = generator(
    messages,
    max_new_tokens=200,
    temperature=1.0,
)
 
print(result[0]["generated_text"])

Advanced inference with `.generate()`

If you want more control, you can load the model and tokenizer manually and invoke the .generate() method:

from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer
 
model_name = "openai/gpt-oss-20b"
 
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_name)
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
    model_name,
    torch_dtype="auto",
    device_map="auto"
)
 
messages = [
    {"role": "user", "content": "Explain what MXFP4 quantization is."},
]
 
inputs = tokenizer.apply_chat_template(
    messages,
    add_generation_prompt=True,
    return_tensors="pt",
    return_dict=True,
).to(model.device)
 
outputs = model.generate(
    **inputs,
    max_new_tokens=200,
    temperature=0.7
)
 
print(tokenizer.decode(outputs[0]))

Chat template and tool calling

OpenAI gpt-oss models use the harmony response format for structuring messages, including reasoning and tool calls.

To construct prompts you can use the built-in chat template of Transformers. Alternatively, you can install and use the openai-harmony library for more control.

To use the chat template:

from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer
 
model_name = "openai/gpt-oss-20b"
 
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_name)
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
    model_name,
    device_map="auto",
    torch_dtype="auto",
)
 
messages = [
    {"role": "system", "content": "Always respond in riddles"},
    {"role": "user", "content": "What is the weather like in Madrid?"},
]
 
inputs = tokenizer.apply_chat_template(
    messages,
    add_generation_prompt=True,
    return_tensors="pt",
    return_dict=True,
).to(model.device)
 
generated = model.generate(**inputs, max_new_tokens=100)
print(tokenizer.decode(generated[0][inputs["input_ids"].shape[-1] :]))

To integrate the openai-harmony library to prepare prompts and parse responses, first install it like this:

pip install openai-harmony

Here’s an example of how to use the library to build your prompts and encode them to tokens:

import json
from openai_harmony import (
    HarmonyEncodingName,
    load_harmony_encoding,
    Conversation,
    Message,
    Role,
    SystemContent,
    DeveloperContent
)
from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer
 
encoding = load_harmony_encoding(HarmonyEncodingName.HARMONY_GPT_OSS)
 
# Build conversation
convo = Conversation.from_messages([
    Message.from_role_and_content(Role.SYSTEM, SystemContent.new()),
    Message.from_role_and_content(
        Role.DEVELOPER,
        DeveloperContent.new().with_instructions("Always respond in riddles")
    ),
    Message.from_role_and_content(Role.USER, "What is the weather like in SF?")
])
 
# Render prompt
prefill_ids = encoding.render_conversation_for_completion(convo, Role.ASSISTANT)
stop_token_ids = encoding.stop_tokens_for_assistant_actions()
 
# Load model
model_name = "openai/gpt-oss-20b"
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_name)
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(model_name, torch_dtype="auto", device_map="auto")
 
# Generate
outputs = model.generate(
    input_ids=[prefill_ids],
    max_new_tokens=128,
    eos_token_id=stop_token_ids
)
 
# Parse completion tokens
completion_ids = outputs[0][len(prefill_ids):]
entries = encoding.parse_messages_from_completion_tokens(completion_ids, Role.ASSISTANT)
 
for message in entries:
    print(json.dumps(message.to_dict(), indent=2))

Note that the Developer role in Harmony maps to the system prompt in the chat template.

Multi-GPU & distributed inference

The large gpt-oss-120b fits on a single H100 GPU when using MXFP4. If you want to run it on multiple GPUs, you can:

Use tp_plan="auto" for automatic placement and tensor parallelism
Launch with accelerate launch or torchrun for distributed setups
Leverage Expert Parallelism
Use specialised Flash attention kernels for faster inference

from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer
from transformers.distributed import DistributedConfig
import torch
 
model_path = "openai/gpt-oss-120b"
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_path, padding_side="left")
 
device_map = {
    # Enable Expert Parallelism
    "distributed_config": DistributedConfig(enable_expert_parallel=1),
    # Enable Tensor Parallelism
    "tp_plan": "auto",
}
 
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
    model_path,
    torch_dtype="auto",
    attn_implementation="kernels-community/vllm-flash-attn3",
    **device_map,
)
 
messages = [
     {"role": "user", "content": "Explain how expert parallelism works in large language models."}
]
 
inputs = tokenizer.apply_chat_template(
    messages,
    add_generation_prompt=True,
    return_tensors="pt",
    return_dict=True,
).to(model.device)
 
outputs = model.generate(**inputs, max_new_tokens=1000)
 
# Decode and print
response = tokenizer.decode(outputs[0])
print("Model response:", response.split("<|channel|>final<|message|>")[-1].strip())

You can then run this on a node with four GPUs via

torchrun --nproc_per_node=4 generate.py

Aug 5, 2025