Quick Start

Get microgpt running in just a few minutes. No installation required!

Prerequisites

You only need Python (3.7+) installed on your computer. That's it!

python --version

Step 1: Clone or Download

If you have git:

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/microgpt.git
cd microgpt

Otherwise, just download microgpt.py from the repository.

Step 2: Run!

python microgpt.py

That's it! You'll see:

vocab size: 26, num docs: 32033
num params: 4125
step 1 / 1000 | loss 3.2589
step 2 / 1000 | loss 3.1892
...
step 1000 / 1000 | loss 1.4234

--- generation ---
sample 0: emma
sample 1: ava
sample 2: olivi
sample 3: ela
sample 4: mia

mean loss last 50 steps: 1.4234

What Happens?

1. Downloads data - First run downloads a file of 32,000+ names
2. Builds vocabulary - Creates mappings for all characters
3. Initializes model - Sets up ~4,000 parameters
4. Trains - Runs 1000 iterations (takes ~30 seconds)
5. Generates - Creates 5 new names!

Customizing the Model

Small Model (Fast)

python microgpt.py --n_embd 16 --n_layer 1 --num_steps 500

~4K parameters, trains in 10 seconds

Medium Model (Balanced)

python microgpt.py --n_embd 32 --n_layer 2 --num_steps 2000

~20K parameters, trains in 1 minute

Large Model (Better Results)

python microgpt.py --n_embd 64 --n_layer 4 --num_steps 5000

~100K parameters, trains in 5 minutes

Command-Line Options

Understanding the Output

step 1 / 1000 | loss 3.2589
       ↑       ↑       ↑
    current   total  how wrong
    step     steps  the model is

• Loss: Lower is better (starts ~3.2, ends ~1.4)
• Samples: Generated names after training

Next Steps

Ready to learn how it works? Head to the next page!