huggingface down: openchat can't be started

[antioxidanz]

Currently, huggingface.co is down, and OpenChat cannot be started anymore, even though the model has already been downloaded. Is there a way to start OpenChat without the huggingface check?

[imoneoi]

I think it's related to the model loading of Transformers, which checks for model updates on HuggingFace every time. One temporary solution would be downloading to a local folder and start it there.