Serving Image Selection The serving container is the single thing most likely to break a SageMaker deployment that "looked correct on paper". Wrong container, stale tag, or the wrong AMI — all produce the same opaque error. Rule zero: HuggingFace images always win When both a HuggingFace-curated family ( , , , , ) and a generic family ( , , , ) can serve the model, the HuggingFace one is mandatory, not preferred . The only valid reasons to use a generic image: 1. Verified incompatibility — the model needs an architecture/modality/feature no available HuggingFace tag supports, confirmed agains…