The only way I found around it in Colab was to
(I) disable Notebook Access for any and all keys (the key shaped menu item on the left side of the Colab UI)
(Ii) Go to Runtime > Disconnect and delete runtime
(Iii) Reconnect to a new runtime
(Iv) Replace any huggingfae-cli logins with :
from huggingface_hub import notebook_login
notebook_login()
(v) Enter your ‘write’ token when prompted
Basically, colab seems to cache any prior “read” tokens in a very persistent way that doesn’t get overwritten or replaced when you load a separate write token later in your notebook.
Hopefully this helps someone. Cost me like 5 hours I’m not getting back.