diff --git a/runner/dl_checkpoints.sh b/runner/dl_checkpoints.sh
index 030374ef..19e1db4d 100755
--- a/runner/dl_checkpoints.sh
+++ b/runner/dl_checkpoints.sh
@@ -1,13 +1,25 @@
 #!/bin/bash
+echo "Starting livepeer AI subnet model downloader..."
 
-mkdir -p models
+# Enable HF transfer acceleration.
+# See: https://huggingface.co/docs/huggingface_hub/v0.22.1/package_reference/environment_variables#hfhubenablehftransfer.
+export HF_HUB_ENABLE_HF_TRANSFER=1
 
 # Use HF_TOKEN if set, otherwise use huggingface-cli's login.
 [ -n "$HF_TOKEN" ] && TOKEN_FLAG="--token=${HF_TOKEN}" || TOKEN_FLAG=""
-echo $TOKEN_FLAG
 
-# text-to-image, image-to-image
-echo "Downloading unrestricted models..."
+echo "Creating models directory in the current working directory..."
+mkdir -p models
+
+# Ensure 'huggingface-cli' is installed.
+echo "Checking if 'huggingface-cli' is installed..."
+if ! command -v huggingface-cli > /dev/null 2>&1; then
+    echo "WARN: The huggingface-cli is required to download models. Please install it using 'pip install huggingface_hub[cli,hf_transfer]'."
+    exit
+fi
+
+# Download text-to-image and image-to-image models.
+printf "\nDownloading unrestricted models...\n"
 huggingface-cli download stabilityai/sd-turbo --include "*.fp16.safetensors" "*.json" "*.txt" --exclude ".onnx" ".onnx_data" --cache-dir models
 huggingface-cli download stabilityai/sdxl-turbo --include "*.fp16.safetensors" "*.json" "*.txt" --exclude ".onnx" ".onnx_data" --cache-dir models
 huggingface-cli download runwayml/stable-diffusion-v1-5 --include "*.fp16.safetensors" "*.json" "*.txt" --exclude ".onnx" ".onnx_data" --cache-dir models
@@ -15,11 +27,17 @@ huggingface-cli download stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0 --include "*.f
 huggingface-cli download prompthero/openjourney-v4 --include "*.safetensors" "*.json" "*.txt" --exclude ".onnx" ".onnx_data" --cache-dir models
 huggingface-cli download ByteDance/SDXL-Lightning --include "*unet.safetensors" --exclude "*lora.safetensors*" --cache-dir models
 
-# image-to-video
+# Download image-to-video models.
 huggingface-cli download stabilityai/stable-video-diffusion-img2vid-xt --include "*.fp16.safetensors" "*.json" --cache-dir models
 
-# image-to-video (token-gated)
-echo -e "\nDownloading token-gated models..." 
+# Ensure user is logged in or has HF_TOKEN set to download token-gated models.
+printf "\nDownloading token-gated models...\n"
+if [ -z "$HF_TOKEN" ] && [ "$(huggingface-cli whoami)" = "Not logged in" ]; then
+    printf "WARN: Not logged in and HF_TOKEN not set. Log in with 'huggingface-cli login' or set HF_TOKEN to download token-gated models.\n"
+    exit
+fi
+
+# Download image-to-video models (token-gated).
 huggingface-cli download stabilityai/stable-video-diffusion-img2vid-xt-1-1 --include "*.fp16.safetensors" "*.json" --cache-dir models ${TOKEN_FLAG}
 
-echo "Models downloaded successfully!"
+printf "\nAll models downloaded successfully!\n"