diff --git a/.env.example b/.env.example
index 05c3002..60a5542 100644
--- a/.env.example
+++ b/.env.example
@@ -8,6 +8,9 @@ BLIP_URL=http://blip:8000
 YOLO_URL=http://yolo:8000
 QDRANT_SVC_URL=http://qdrant-svc:8000
 
+# HuggingFace token for private/gated models (optional)
+HUGGINGFACE_TOKEN=
+
 # Qdrant wrapper (qdrant-svc)
 QDRANT_HOST=qdrant
 QDRANT_PORT=6333
diff --git a/docker-compose.yml b/docker-compose.yml
index 16d266a..adfca36 100644
--- a/docker-compose.yml
+++ b/docker-compose.yml
@@ -51,6 +51,7 @@ services:
     environment:
       - MODEL_NAME=ViT-B-32
       - MODEL_PRETRAINED=openai
+      - HUGGINGFACE_TOKEN=${HUGGINGFACE_TOKEN}
 
   blip:
     build:
@@ -59,6 +60,7 @@ services:
     environment:
       #- BLIP_MODEL=Salesforce/blip-image-captioning-base
       - BLIP_MODEL=Salesforce/blip-image-captioning-small
+      - HUGGINGFACE_TOKEN=${HUGGINGFACE_TOKEN}
 
   yolo:
     build: