Hugging Face Unveils Major Update to Kernels Project: New Repository Type, Enhanced Security, and Agentic Development Support

Hugging Face released a major update to the Kernels project, which includes several key changes. A new repository type on the Hub — "kernel" — has been introduced, allowing display of information about supported accelerators, operating systems, and backend versions. Security has been improved: by default, only kernels from trusted publishers are loaded, and code signing using Sigstore cosign and ephemeral keys has been added to protect against credential compromise. The CLI has been revamped: now the kernels library is responsible only for downloading and preparing kernels, while kernel-builder handles their compilation. Framework support has been expanded: support for Torch Stable ABI (ensuring compatibility with PyTorch for two years) and Apache TVM FFI (a standardized interface for kernels working with PyTorch, Jax, CuPy) has been added. A foundation for agent-based kernel development has been created: kernel-builder and kernels support a cycle where agents create, build, test, and optimize kernels, and integration with HF Jobs allows running benchmarks on different hardware. Additionally, an environment setup script has been added, a has_kernel() method for checking compatibility, and improved support for manylinux_2_28 through dynamic linking of libstdc++.