llama.cpp INI Presets#

Introduction#

The INI preset feature, introduced in PR#17859, allows users to create reusable and shareable parameter configurations for llama.cpp.

Using Presets with the Server#

When running multiple models on the server (router mode), INI preset files can be used to configure model-specific parameters. Please refer to the server documentation for more details.

Using a Hugging Face Preset#

[!IMPORTANT]

Please only use presets that you can trust! Unknown presets may be unsafe

You can push your preset to Hugging Face Hub and share with other users by: 1. Creating an empty model repository on Hugging Face 2. Creating a preset.ini file in the root directory of the repository

Example of a preset.ini:

[*]
ctx-size             = 0
mmap                 = 1
kv-unified           = 1
parallel             = 4
spec-default         = 1

[Qwen3.5-4B]
hf                   = unsloth/Qwen3.5-4B-GGUF:Q4_K_M
ctx-size             = 262144
batch-size           = 2048
ubatch-size          = 2048
top-p                = 1.0
top-k                = 0
min-p                = 0.01
temp                 = 1.0

[gpt-oss-120b-hf]
hf                   = ggml-org/gpt-oss-120b-GGUF
ctx-size             = 262144
batch-size           = 2048
ubatch-size          = 2048
top-p                = 1.0
top-k                = 0
min-p                = 0.01
temp                 = 1.0
chat-template-kwargs = {"reasoning_effort": "high"}

The preset will be loaded similarly to the --models-preset option. Therefore, you can also override certain params via CLI arguments:

# Force temp = 0.1, overriding the preset value
llama-cli -hf username/my-preset --temp 0.1

Named presets#

If you want to define multiple preset configurations for one or more GGUF models, you can create a blank HF repo containing a single preset.ini file that references the actual model(s):

[*]
mmap = 1

[gpt-oss-20b-hf]
hf          = ggml-org/gpt-oss-20b-GGUF
batch-size  = 2048
ubatch-size = 2048
top-p       = 1.0
top-k       = 0
min-p       = 0.01
temp        = 1.0
chat-template-kwargs = {"reasoning_effort": "high"}

[gpt-oss-120b-hf]
hf          = ggml-org/gpt-oss-120b-GGUF
batch-size  = 2048
ubatch-size = 2048
top-p       = 1.0
top-k       = 0
min-p       = 0.01
temp        = 1.0
chat-template-kwargs = {"reasoning_effort": "high"}

You can then use it via llama-cli or llama-server, example:

llama-server -hf user/repo:gpt-oss-120b-hf

Please make sure to provide the correct hf-repo for each child preset. Otherwise, you may get error: The specified tag is not a valid quantization scheme.

System-level config#

The system-level config, added in PR #26118, allows sharing the same set of options among multiple tools and examples. Unlike the sections above, it is not limited to the server.

These files are loaded on startup if present. A later file overrides an earlier one: 1. System-wide: /etc/llama.cpp/config.ini (or %PROGRAMDATA%\llama.cpp\config.ini on Windows) 2. User-level: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/llama.cpp/config.ini, ~/.config/llama.cpp/config.ini by default (or %APPDATA%\llama.cpp\config.ini on Windows)

The config file is applied first, then its options are overridden by ENV variables, CLI arguments and model presets (in router mode).

Note: - Only the [*] and default sections are used; options written before any section header belong to "default. Named sections are ignored - Tool-specific options can be specified, but will be ignored (with a warning) if the example doesn't support it
Example: if you specify port = 1234, only llama-server will use it, other examples will ignore it - model or hf-repo are not recommended to be configured system-level, because it may introduce conflicts
Example: a hf-repo in the config file still takes effect when you pass -m on the command line, so you may load a different model than expected