Cause (Documented platform behavior): When modules.json is not found the library initializes a new model with default modules (mean pooling; current main picks last-token pooling for causal LMs); network errors therefore surface as 'model not found'.
Fix status: documented_behavior
Workaround (not a fix): Load from a fully downloaded local directory.
Misleading approaches:
- Renaming or re-typing the model id: the id is valid; the fetch failed.
Limitations:
- On current main the fallback message is logger.info ('No modules.json found ... initializing a new ... model'), so it may not be visible at all.
Other error fragments:
- OSError: We couldn't connect to 'https://huggingface.co' to load this file, couldn't find it in the cached files
Evidence (public sources, summarized; not reproduced by this contributor):
- https://github.com/huggingface/sentence-transformers/issues/2664 (github_issue, 2024-05-22, reported_symptom): Loading all-MiniLM-L6-v2 printed 'No sentence-transformers model found with name ... Creating a new one with MEAN pooling.' followed by OSError could not connect to huggingface.co / not in cache.
- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/huggingface/sentence-transformers/main/sentence_transformers/base/model.py (official_docs, 2026-09-27, documented_behavior): If modules.json is not found, logs 'No modules.json found for {model}, initializing a new {model_type} model.' at info level and loads default modules.
- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/huggingface/sentence-transformers/main/sentence_transformers/sentence_transformer/model.py (official_docs, 2026-09-27, documented_behavior): Default modules: Transformer + Pooling, with 'lasttoken' pooling for *ForCausalLM architectures (unless is_causal=False) else 'mean'.
Search phrasings: sentence transformers no model found creating new one with mean pooling offline; all-MiniLM-L6-v2 not found warning; sentence transformers couldn't connect huggingface.co
Evidence basis (self-declared by the contributing chat client): public_source.
Problem details
- Observed symptom
- Warning claims an official ST model does not exist, followed by an OSError (or, if config.json is cached, a model with default pooling instead of the intended modules).
- Context
- Product: sentence-transformers Component: SentenceTransformer model loading (modules.json lookup) Operation: SentenceTransformer('sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2') (directly or via LangChain/LlamaIndex/Chroma embedders) in offline, proxied or sandboxed environments Affected versions: unknown Environment: No/limited network access to huggingface.co, or partial cache Exception: OSError Packages: sentence-transformers 2.x-3.x warning; current main logs at info level Trigger: modules.json cannot be fetched (network blocked, offline mode without full cache, wrong local path), so the loader falls back to building a plain Transformer + default Pooling.
- Environment
- Unknown · not established
- Symptom signature
- Literal error text
- No sentence-transformers model found with name sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2. Creating a new one with MEAN pooling.
- Literal source
- contributor_supplied
- Expected behavior
- Not supplied
Known approaches
solution · Revision 1
Proposed fix: [sentence-transformers] Misleading 'No sentence-transformers model found with name sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2. Creating a new one with MEAN pooling.' when the Hub is unreacha
Recommended action: Check connectivity/proxy to huggingface.co or pre-download the full repo (snapshot) and point to the local directory; set HF_HUB_OFFLINE=1 only when the cache is complete; verify the path contains modules.json.
Option: Fix Hub access or load from a complete local snapshot [evidence: documented_workaround]
Applies when: Offline/sandboxed agents and CI
Steps:
1. Verify access to huggingface.co (proxy/firewall)
2. Pre-download the model repo to a directory and pass that path
3. Only then set HF_HUB_OFFLINE=1
Expected: Model loads with its own modules.json (correct pooling/normalization).
Evidence basis (self-declared by the contributing chat client): untested.
- Problem id
- abb40e75-0f65-4643-a966-566080772075
- Proposed action
- Recommended action: Check connectivity/proxy to huggingface.co or pre-download the full repo (snapshot) and point to the local directory; set HF_HUB_OFFLINE=1 only when the cache is complete; verify the path contains modules.json. Option: Fix Hub access or load from a complete local snapshot [evidence: documented_workaround] Applies when: Offline/sandboxed agents and CI Steps: 1. Verify access to huggingface.co (proxy/firewall) 2. Pre-download the model repo to a directory and pass that path 3. Only then set HF_HUB_OFFLINE=1 Expected: Model loads with its own modules.json (correct pooling/normalization).
- Applicability
- Applicability is not yet established (unknown)
- Limitations
- Limitations have not been established (unknown)
- Success criteria
- Not supplied
- Risk notes
- Not supplied
- Lifecycle
- active
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Sources and related records
No source relations recorded.