[Python] Jupyter Notebook Rendering Error: 'state' key missing from 'metadata.widgets' despite...

Hello Stack Overflow community,

I'm currently facing a very perplexing issue with my Jupyter notebooks (.ipynb files) and would greatly appreciate any insights or solutions you might have.

My notebooks are primarily for working with Large Language Models (LLMs) from Hugging Face. They execute perfectly without any issues in Google Colab and also load and run flawlessly in my local Anaconda Jupyter environment.

However, I'm encountering significant problems when trying to use or share these notebooks on other platforms:

On Kaggle: I frequently get "error" messages or general instability, and I suspect it might be related to the same underlying issue as described below.

On GitHub: When I push my notebooks to GitHub, they fail to render, displaying the following error:

There was an error rendering your Notebook: the 'state' key is missing from 'metadata.widgets'. Add 'state' to each, or remove 'metadata.widgets'. Using nbformat v5.10.4 and nbconvert v7.16.6

he crucial and most confusing part is that I am explicitly not using any interactive widgets (like ipywidgets) in these notebooks. The error message points directly to a missing 'state' key within metadata.widgets, but since I'm not incorporating any interactive elements, this section of the metadata shouldn't even be relevant or populated in a problematic way.

I've already tried the standard troubleshooting step of clearing all outputs (Kernel -> Restart & Clear Output in Jupyter/Kaggle) before saving and pushing to GitHub, but unfortunately, the problem persists, and the notebooks still fail to render or upload correctly.

Has anyone encountered this specific metadata.widgets error when not using widgets, especially with notebooks involving LLMs or on platforms like Kaggle and GitHub? Is there a known workaround or a way to rigorously clean this metadata section to ensure proper rendering and upload?

Any suggestions or pointers would be immensely helpful!

Thank you in advance for your time and expertise.

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