diff --git a/tokenizer/base.py b/tokenizer/base.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..75998b32b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tokenizer/base.py
@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+# Copyright (c) Meta Platforms, Inc. and affiliates.
+# All rights reserved.
+#
+# This source code is licensed under the BSD-style license found in the
+# LICENSE file in the root directory of this source tree.
+"""
+Abstract base class for all tokenizer classes in python matching c++ interface.
+"""
+
+# Standard
+from abc import ABC, abstractmethod
+from typing import List
+
+
+class TokenizerBase(ABC):
+    __doc__ = __doc__
+
+    @abstractmethod
+    def encode(self, s: str, *, bos: bool = False, eos: bool = False) -> List[int]:
+        """Encode the given string and optionally include bos/eos tokens"""
+
+    @abstractmethod
+    def decode(self, ids: List[int]) -> str:
+        """Decode the given token ids into a string"""
+
+    @abstractmethod
+    def bos_id(self) -> int:
+        """The id of the begin-of-string token"""
+
+    @abstractmethod
+    def eos_id(self) -> int:
+        """The id of the end-of-string token"""
diff --git a/tokenizer/hf_tokenizer.py b/tokenizer/hf_tokenizer.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..7ad5807d1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tokenizer/hf_tokenizer.py
@@ -0,0 +1,92 @@
+# Copyright (c) Meta Platforms, Inc. and affiliates.
+# All rights reserved.
+#
+# This source code is licensed under the BSD-style license found in the
+# LICENSE file in the root directory of this source tree.
+
+# Standard
+from typing import List, Optional
+import json
+import os
+
+# Third Party
+from tokenizers import Tokenizer
+
+# Local
+from .base import TokenizerBase
+
+
+class HFTokenizer(TokenizerBase):
+    """
+    Wrapper around the Huggingface `tokenizers` library for API compatibility
+    """
+
+    def __init__(self, file_path: str):
+        # If the path is a directory, look for "tokenizer.json" which is
+        # standard for transformers checkpoints and also look for the
+        # "tokenizer_config.json" file to parse eos/bos tokens
+        if os.path.isdir(file_path):
+            tokenizer_path = os.path.join(file_path, "tokenizer.json")
+            tokenizer_config_path = os.path.join(file_path, "tokenizer_config.json")
+        else:
+            tokenizer_path = file_path
+            tokenizer_config_path = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(file_path), "tokenizer_config.json")
+        if not os.path.isfile(tokenizer_path):
+            tokenizer_config_path = None
+
+        # Load the tokenizer itself
+        self._tokenizer = Tokenizer.from_file(tokenizer_path)
+
+        # If available, parse bos/eos tokens from the tokenizer config
+        self._bos_id, self._eos_id = None, None
+        if tokenizer_config_path is not None:
+            with open(tokenizer_config_path, "r") as handle:
+                tok_config = json.load(handle)
+            bos_token = tok_config.get("bos_token")
+            eos_token = tok_config.get("eos_token")
+            if bos_token is not None:
+                self._bos_id = self._tokenizer.token_to_id(bos_token)
+            if eos_token is not None:
+                self._eos_id = self._tokenizer.token_to_id(eos_token)
+
+        # If no eos/bos tokens found, go looking for them!
+        if None in [self._bos_id, self._eos_id]:
+            tok_content = json.loads(self._tokenizer.to_str())
+            if self._bos_id is None:
+                self._bos_id = self._look_for_special_token(tok_content, ["begin", "text"])
+            if self._eos_id is None:
+                self._eos_id = self._look_for_special_token(tok_content, ["end", "text"])
+
+        assert None not in [self._bos_id, self._eos_id], "Unable to find an BOS/EOS tokens"
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def _look_for_special_token(added_tokens: dict, search_strs: List[str]) -> Optional[int]:
+        candidate_toks = added_tokens
+        for search_str in search_strs:
+            candidate_toks = [
+                tok for tok in candidate_toks
+                if tok["special"] and search_str in tok["content"]
+            ]
+            if len(candidate_toks) == 1:
+                return candidate_toks[0]["id"]
+
+    def encode(
+        self,
+        s: str,
+        *,
+        bos: bool = False,
+        eos: bool = False,
+    ) -> List[int]:
+        res = self._tokenizer.encode(s, add_special_tokens=bos).ids
+        if eos and (not res or res[-1] != self._eos_token):
+            res.append(self._eos_token)
+        return res
+
+    def decode(self, ids: List[int]) -> str:
+        return self._tokenizer.decode(ids)
+
+    def bos_id(self) -> int:
+        return self._bos_id
+
+    def eos_id(self) -> int:
+        return self._eos_id
diff --git a/tokenizer/tiktoken.py b/tokenizer/tiktoken.py
index 9e9fe2264..30eb98624 100644
--- a/tokenizer/tiktoken.py
+++ b/tokenizer/tiktoken.py
@@ -23,6 +23,8 @@
 import tiktoken
 from tiktoken.load import load_tiktoken_bpe
 
+from .base import TokenizerBase
+
 
 logger = getLogger(__name__)
 
@@ -38,7 +40,7 @@ class Message(TypedDict):
 Dialog = Sequence[Message]
 
 
-class Tokenizer:
+class Tokenizer(TokenizerBase):
     """
     tokenizing and encoding/decoding text using the Tiktoken tokenizer.
     """
diff --git a/torchchat/cli/builder.py b/torchchat/cli/builder.py
index 511cf1f35..0fd9c58b9 100644
--- a/torchchat/cli/builder.py
+++ b/torchchat/cli/builder.py
@@ -204,6 +204,7 @@ class TokenizerArgs:
     tokenizer_path: Optional[Union[Path, str]] = None
     is_sentencepiece: bool = False
     is_tiktoken: bool = False
+    is_hf_tokenizer: bool = False
     t: Optional[Any] = None
 
     def __post_init__(self):
@@ -213,6 +214,7 @@ def __post_init__(self):
             self.t = TiktokenTokenizer(model_path=str(self.tokenizer_path))
             self.is_tiktoken = True
             self.is_sentencepiece = False
+            self.is_hf_tokenizer = False
             return
         except:
             pass
@@ -223,12 +225,25 @@ def __post_init__(self):
             self.t = SentencePieceProcessor(model_file=str(self.tokenizer_path))
             self.is_tiktoken = False
             self.is_sentencepiece = True
+            self.is_hf_tokenizer = False
+            return
+        except:
+            pass
+
+        try:
+            from tokenizer.hf_tokenizer import HFTokenizer
+
+            self.t = HFTokenizer(str(self.tokenizer_path))
+            self.is_tiktoken = False
+            self.is_sentencepiece = False
+            self.is_hf_tokenizer = True
             return
         except:
             pass
 
         self.is_tiktoken = False
         self.is_sentencepiece = False
+        self.is_hf_tokenizer = False
         self.t = None
         return
 
@@ -240,16 +255,27 @@ def validate_model(
         if model is None:
             return
 
-        if self.is_tiktoken == self.is_sentencepiece:
+        if sum([self.is_tiktoken, self.is_hf_tokenizer, self.is_sentencepiece]) != 1:
             raise RuntimeError(f"no tokenizer was found at {self.tokenizer_path}")
 
         is_tiktoken = self.is_tiktoken
         is_sentencepiece = self.is_sentencepiece
+        is_hf_tokenizer = self.is_hf_tokenizer
         use_tiktoken = model.config.use_tiktoken
+        use_hf_tokenizer = model.config.use_hf_tokenizer
+        use_sentencepiece = not (use_tiktoken or use_hf_tokenizer)
 
-        if not (is_tiktoken == use_tiktoken) or not (is_sentencepiece != use_tiktoken):
+        if (
+            (is_tiktoken and not use_tiktoken) or
+            (is_hf_tokenizer and not use_hf_tokenizer) or
+            (is_sentencepiece and not use_sentencepiece)
+        ):
             raise RuntimeError(
-                f"model-specified tokenizer ({tokenizer_setting_to_name(use_tiktoken)}) does not match provided tokenizer ({tokenizer_setting_to_name(is_tiktoken)}) for {model_description}"
+                "model-specified tokenizer ({}) does not match provided tokenizer ({}) for {}".format(
+                    tokenizer_setting_to_name(use_tiktoken, use_hf_tokenizer),
+                    tokenizer_setting_to_name(is_tiktoken, is_hf_tokenizer),
+                    model_description,
+                )
             )
 
         return
@@ -605,5 +631,9 @@ def _initialize_model(
     return model
 
 
-def tokenizer_setting_to_name(tiktoken: bool = False) -> str:
-    return "TikToken" if tiktoken else "SentencePiece"
+def tokenizer_setting_to_name(tiktoken: bool, tokenizers: bool) -> str:
+    if tiktoken:
+        return "TikToken"
+    if tokenizers:
+        return "Tokenizers"
+    return "SentencePiece"
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/torchchat/model.py b/torchchat/model.py
index 7868b6593..11f3dc167 100644
--- a/torchchat/model.py
+++ b/torchchat/model.py
@@ -270,7 +270,9 @@ class TransformerArgs:
     norm_eps: float = 1e-5
     multiple_of: int = 256
     ffn_dim_multiplier: Optional[int] = None
+    # Select the desired tokenizer. Defaults to sentencepiece
     use_tiktoken: bool = False
+    use_hf_tokenizer: bool = False
     max_seq_length: int = 8192
     rope_scaling: Optional[Dict[str, Any]] = None
     # For pipeline parallel
@@ -327,12 +329,14 @@ class ModelArgs:
     model_type: ModelType
     transformer_args: Dict[str, Dict[str, Any]]
     use_tiktoken: bool
+    use_hf_tokenizer: bool
 
     def __init__(
         self,
         transformer_args: Dict[str, Dict[str, Any]],
         model_type: ModelType = ModelType.TextOnly,
         use_tiktoken: bool = False,
+        use_hf_tokenizer: bool = False,
     ) -> None:
         self._sanity_check(transformer_args, model_type)
 
@@ -341,6 +345,7 @@ def __init__(
 
         # Model-level attributes
         self.use_tiktoken = use_tiktoken
+        self.use_hf_tokenizer = use_hf_tokenizer
 
     def _sanity_check(
         self,
@@ -367,7 +372,8 @@ def from_params(cls, params_path):
             }
 
         use_tiktoken = loaded_params.get("use_tiktoken", False)
-        return cls(transformer_args, model_type, use_tiktoken)
+        use_hf_tokenizer = loaded_params.get("use_hf_tokenizer", False)
+        return cls(transformer_args, model_type, use_tiktoken, use_hf_tokenizer)
 
     @classmethod
     def from_table(cls, name: str):