
LLMs-from-scratch
Implement a ChatGPT-like LLM in PyTorch from scratch, step by step
Stars: 69141

This repository contains the code for coding, pretraining, and finetuning a GPT-like LLM and is the official code repository for the book Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch). In _Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch)_, you'll discover how LLMs work from the inside out. In this book, I'll guide you step by step through creating your own LLM, explaining each stage with clear text, diagrams, and examples. The method described in this book for training and developing your own small-but-functional model for educational purposes mirrors the approach used in creating large-scale foundational models such as those behind ChatGPT.
README:
This repository contains the code for developing, pretraining, and finetuning a GPT-like LLM and is the official code repository for the book Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch).
In Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch), you'll learn and understand how large language models (LLMs) work from the inside out by coding them from the ground up, step by step. In this book, I'll guide you through creating your own LLM, explaining each stage with clear text, diagrams, and examples.
The method described in this book for training and developing your own small-but-functional model for educational purposes mirrors the approach used in creating large-scale foundational models such as those behind ChatGPT. In addition, this book includes code for loading the weights of larger pretrained models for finetuning.
- Link to the official source code repository
- Link to the book at Manning (the publisher's website)
- Link to the book page on Amazon.com
- ISBN 9781633437166
To download a copy of this repository, click on the Download ZIP button or execute the following command in your terminal:
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/rasbt/LLMs-from-scratch.git
(If you downloaded the code bundle from the Manning website, please consider visiting the official code repository on GitHub at https://github.com/rasbt/LLMs-from-scratch for the latest updates.)
Please note that this README.md
file is a Markdown (.md
) file. If you have downloaded this code bundle from the Manning website and are viewing it on your local computer, I recommend using a Markdown editor or previewer for proper viewing. If you haven't installed a Markdown editor yet, Ghostwriter is a good free option.
You can alternatively view this and other files on GitHub at https://github.com/rasbt/LLMs-from-scratch in your browser, which renders Markdown automatically.
Tip: If you're seeking guidance on installing Python and Python packages and setting up your code environment, I suggest reading the README.md file located in the setup directory.
Chapter Title | Main Code (for Quick Access) | All Code + Supplementary |
---|---|---|
Setup recommendations | - | - |
Ch 1: Understanding Large Language Models | No code | - |
Ch 2: Working with Text Data | - ch02.ipynb - dataloader.ipynb (summary) - exercise-solutions.ipynb |
./ch02 |
Ch 3: Coding Attention Mechanisms | - ch03.ipynb - multihead-attention.ipynb (summary) - exercise-solutions.ipynb |
./ch03 |
Ch 4: Implementing a GPT Model from Scratch | - ch04.ipynb - gpt.py (summary) - exercise-solutions.ipynb |
./ch04 |
Ch 5: Pretraining on Unlabeled Data | - ch05.ipynb - gpt_train.py (summary) - gpt_generate.py (summary) - exercise-solutions.ipynb |
./ch05 |
Ch 6: Finetuning for Text Classification | - ch06.ipynb - gpt_class_finetune.py - exercise-solutions.ipynb |
./ch06 |
Ch 7: Finetuning to Follow Instructions | - ch07.ipynb - gpt_instruction_finetuning.py (summary) - ollama_evaluate.py (summary) - exercise-solutions.ipynb |
./ch07 |
Appendix A: Introduction to PyTorch | - code-part1.ipynb - code-part2.ipynb - DDP-script.py - exercise-solutions.ipynb |
./appendix-A |
Appendix B: References and Further Reading | No code | - |
Appendix C: Exercise Solutions | No code | - |
Appendix D: Adding Bells and Whistles to the Training Loop | - appendix-D.ipynb | ./appendix-D |
Appendix E: Parameter-efficient Finetuning with LoRA | - appendix-E.ipynb | ./appendix-E |
The mental model below summarizes the contents covered in this book.
The most important prerequisite is a strong foundation in Python programming. With this knowledge, you will be well prepared to explore the fascinating world of LLMs and understand the concepts and code examples presented in this book.
If you have some experience with deep neural networks, you may find certain concepts more familiar, as LLMs are built upon these architectures.
This book uses PyTorch to implement the code from scratch without using any external LLM libraries. While proficiency in PyTorch is not a prerequisite, familiarity with PyTorch basics is certainly useful. If you are new to PyTorch, Appendix A provides a concise introduction to PyTorch. Alternatively, you may find my book, PyTorch in One Hour: From Tensors to Training Neural Networks on Multiple GPUs, helpful for learning about the essentials.
The code in the main chapters of this book is designed to run on conventional laptops within a reasonable timeframe and does not require specialized hardware. This approach ensures that a wide audience can engage with the material. Additionally, the code automatically utilizes GPUs if they are available. (Please see the setup doc for additional recommendations.)
A 17-hour and 15-minute companion video course where I code through each chapter of the book. The course is organized into chapters and sections that mirror the book's structure so that it can be used as a standalone alternative to the book or complementary code-along resource.
Build A Reasoning Model (From Scratch), while a standalone book, can be considered as a sequel to Build A Large Language Model (From Scratch).
It starts with a pretrained model and implements different reasoning approaches, including inference-time scaling, reinforcement learning, and distillation, to improve the model's reasoning capabilities.
Similar to Build A Large Language Model (From Scratch), Build A Reasoning Model (From Scratch) takes a hands-on approach implementing these methods from scratch.
- Amazon link (TBD)
- Manning link
- GitHub repository
Each chapter of the book includes several exercises. The solutions are summarized in Appendix C, and the corresponding code notebooks are available in the main chapter folders of this repository (for example, ./ch02/01_main-chapter-code/exercise-solutions.ipynb.
In addition to the code exercises, you can download a free 170-page PDF titled Test Yourself On Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch) from the Manning website. It contains approximately 30 quiz questions and solutions per chapter to help you test your understanding.
Several folders contain optional materials as a bonus for interested readers:
- Setup
- Chapter 2: Working with text data
- Chapter 3: Coding attention mechanisms
- Chapter 4: Implementing a GPT model from scratch
-
Chapter 5: Pretraining on unlabeled data:
- Alternative Weight Loading Methods
- Pretraining GPT on the Project Gutenberg Dataset
- Adding Bells and Whistles to the Training Loop
- Optimizing Hyperparameters for Pretraining
- Building a User Interface to Interact With the Pretrained LLM
- Converting GPT to Llama
- Llama 3.2 From Scratch
- Qwen3 Dense and Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) From Scratch
- Gemma 3 From Scratch
- Memory-efficient Model Weight Loading
- Extending the Tiktoken BPE Tokenizer with New Tokens
- PyTorch Performance Tips for Faster LLM Training
- Chapter 6: Finetuning for classification
-
Chapter 7: Finetuning to follow instructions
- Dataset Utilities for Finding Near Duplicates and Creating Passive Voice Entries
- Evaluating Instruction Responses Using the OpenAI API and Ollama
- Generating a Dataset for Instruction Finetuning
- Improving a Dataset for Instruction Finetuning
- Generating a Preference Dataset with Llama 3.1 70B and Ollama
- Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) for LLM Alignment
- Building a User Interface to Interact With the Instruction Finetuned GPT Model
I welcome all sorts of feedback, best shared via the Manning Forum or GitHub Discussions. Likewise, if you have any questions or just want to bounce ideas off others, please don't hesitate to post these in the forum as well.
Please note that since this repository contains the code corresponding to a print book, I currently cannot accept contributions that would extend the contents of the main chapter code, as it would introduce deviations from the physical book. Keeping it consistent helps ensure a smooth experience for everyone.
If you find this book or code useful for your research, please consider citing it.
Chicago-style citation:
Raschka, Sebastian. Build A Large Language Model (From Scratch). Manning, 2024. ISBN: 978-1633437166.
BibTeX entry:
@book{build-llms-from-scratch-book,
author = {Sebastian Raschka},
title = {Build A Large Language Model (From Scratch)},
publisher = {Manning},
year = {2024},
isbn = {978-1633437166},
url = {https://www.manning.com/books/build-a-large-language-model-from-scratch},
github = {https://github.com/rasbt/LLMs-from-scratch}
}
For Tasks:
Click tags to check more tools for each tasksFor Jobs:
Alternative AI tools for LLMs-from-scratch
Similar Open Source Tools

LLMs-from-scratch
This repository contains the code for coding, pretraining, and finetuning a GPT-like LLM and is the official code repository for the book Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch). In _Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch)_, you'll discover how LLMs work from the inside out. In this book, I'll guide you step by step through creating your own LLM, explaining each stage with clear text, diagrams, and examples. The method described in this book for training and developing your own small-but-functional model for educational purposes mirrors the approach used in creating large-scale foundational models such as those behind ChatGPT.

aws-genai-llm-chatbot
This repository provides code to deploy a chatbot powered by Multi-Model and Multi-RAG using AWS CDK on AWS. Users can experiment with various Large Language Models and Multimodal Language Models from different providers. The solution supports Amazon Bedrock, Amazon SageMaker self-hosted models, and third-party providers via API. It also offers additional resources like AWS Generative AI CDK Constructs and Project Lakechain for building generative AI solutions and document processing. The roadmap and authors are listed, along with contributors. The library is licensed under the MIT-0 License with information on changelog, code of conduct, and contributing guidelines. A legal disclaimer advises users to conduct their own assessment before using the content for production purposes.

nous
Nous is an open-source TypeScript platform for autonomous AI agents and LLM based workflows. It aims to automate processes, support requests, review code, assist with refactorings, and more. The platform supports various integrations, multiple LLMs/services, CLI and web interface, human-in-the-loop interactions, flexible deployment options, observability with OpenTelemetry tracing, and specific agents for code editing, software engineering, and code review. It offers advanced features like reasoning/planning, memory and function call history, hierarchical task decomposition, and control-loop function calling options. Nous is designed to be a flexible platform for the TypeScript community to expand and support different use cases and integrations.

NeMo-Curator
NeMo Curator is a GPU-accelerated open-source framework designed for efficient large language model data curation. It provides scalable dataset preparation for tasks like foundation model pretraining, domain-adaptive pretraining, supervised fine-tuning, and parameter-efficient fine-tuning. The library leverages GPUs with Dask and RAPIDS to accelerate data curation, offering customizable and modular interfaces for pipeline expansion and model convergence. Key features include data download, text extraction, quality filtering, deduplication, downstream-task decontamination, distributed data classification, and PII redaction. NeMo Curator is suitable for curating high-quality datasets for large language model training.

fluid
Fluid is an open source Kubernetes-native Distributed Dataset Orchestrator and Accelerator for data-intensive applications, such as big data and AI applications. It implements dataset abstraction, scalable cache runtime, automated data operations, elasticity and scheduling, and is runtime platform agnostic. Key concepts include Dataset and Runtime. Prerequisites include Kubernetes version > 1.16, Golang 1.18+, and Helm 3. The tool offers features like accelerating remote file accessing, machine learning, accelerating PVC, preloading dataset, and on-the-fly dataset cache scaling. Contributions are welcomed, and the project is under the Apache 2.0 license with a vendor-neutral approach.

HAMi
HAMi is a Heterogeneous AI Computing Virtualization Middleware designed to manage Heterogeneous AI Computing Devices in a Kubernetes cluster. It allows for device sharing, device memory control, device type specification, and device UUID specification. The tool is easy to use and does not require modifying task YAML files. It includes features like hard limits on device memory, partial device allocation, streaming multiprocessor limits, and core usage specification. HAMi consists of components like a mutating webhook, scheduler extender, device plugins, and in-container virtualization techniques. It is suitable for scenarios requiring device sharing, specific device memory allocation, GPU balancing, low utilization optimization, and scenarios needing multiple small GPUs. The tool requires prerequisites like NVIDIA drivers, CUDA version, nvidia-docker, Kubernetes version, glibc version, and helm. Users can install, upgrade, and uninstall HAMi, submit tasks, and monitor cluster information. The tool's roadmap includes supporting additional AI computing devices, video codec processing, and Multi-Instance GPUs (MIG).

katib
Katib is a Kubernetes-native project for automated machine learning (AutoML). Katib supports Hyperparameter Tuning, Early Stopping and Neural Architecture Search. Katib is the project which is agnostic to machine learning (ML) frameworks. It can tune hyperparameters of applications written in any language of the users’ choice and natively supports many ML frameworks, such as TensorFlow, Apache MXNet, PyTorch, XGBoost, and others. Katib can perform training jobs using any Kubernetes Custom Resources with out of the box support for Kubeflow Training Operator, Argo Workflows, Tekton Pipelines and many more.

Revornix
Revornix is an information management tool designed for the AI era. It allows users to conveniently integrate all visible information and generates comprehensive reports at specific times. The tool offers cross-platform availability, all-in-one content aggregation, document transformation & vectorized storage, native multi-tenancy, localization & open-source features, smart assistant & built-in MCP, seamless LLM integration, and multilingual & responsive experience for users.

taipy
Taipy is an open-source Python library for easy, end-to-end application development, featuring what-if analyses, smart pipeline execution, built-in scheduling, and deployment tools.

arthur-engine
The Arthur Engine is a comprehensive tool for monitoring and governing AI/ML workloads. It provides evaluation and benchmarking of machine learning models, guardrails enforcement, and extensibility for fitting into various application architectures. With support for a wide range of evaluation metrics and customizable features, the tool aims to improve model understanding, optimize generative AI outputs, and prevent data-security and compliance risks. Key features include real-time guardrails, model performance monitoring, feature importance visualization, error breakdowns, and support for custom metrics and models integration.

Hands-On-Large-Language-Models
Hands-On Large Language Models is a repository containing code examples from the book 'The Illustrated LLM Book' by Jay Alammar and Maarten Grootendorst. The repository provides practical tools and concepts for using Large Language Models with over 250 custom-made figures. It covers topics such as language model introduction, tokens and embeddings, transformer LLMs, text classification, text clustering, prompt engineering, text generation techniques, semantic search, multimodal LLMs, text embedding models, fine-tuning representation models, and fine-tuning generation models. The examples are designed to be run on Google Colab with T4 GPU support, but can be adapted to other cloud platforms as well.

langkit
LangKit is an open-source text metrics toolkit for monitoring language models. It offers methods for extracting signals from input/output text, compatible with whylogs. Features include text quality, relevance, security, sentiment, toxicity analysis. Installation via PyPI. Modules contain UDFs for whylogs. Benchmarks show throughput on AWS instances. FAQs available.

openfoodfacts-ai
The openfoodfacts-ai repository is dedicated to tracking and storing experimental AI endeavors, models training, and wishlists related to nutrition table detection, category prediction, logos and labels detection, spellcheck, and other AI projects for Open Food Facts. It serves as a hub for integrating AI models into production and collaborating on AI-related issues. The repository also hosts trained models and datasets for public use and experimentation.

RAGxplorer
RAGxplorer is a tool designed to build visualisations for Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG). It provides functionalities to interact with RAG models, visualize queries, and explore information retrieval tasks. The tool aims to simplify the process of working with RAG models and enhance the understanding of retrieval and generation processes.

TornadoVM
TornadoVM is a plug-in to OpenJDK and GraalVM that allows programmers to automatically run Java programs on heterogeneous hardware. TornadoVM targets OpenCL, PTX and SPIR-V compatible devices which include multi-core CPUs, dedicated GPUs (Intel, NVIDIA, AMD), integrated GPUs (Intel HD Graphics and ARM Mali), and FPGAs (Intel and Xilinx).

only_train_once
Only Train Once (OTO) is an automatic, architecture-agnostic DNN training and compression framework that allows users to train a general DNN from scratch or a pretrained checkpoint to achieve high performance and slimmer architecture simultaneously in a one-shot manner without fine-tuning. The framework includes features for automatic structured pruning and erasing operators, as well as hybrid structured sparse optimizers for efficient model compression. OTO provides tools for pruning zero-invariant group partitioning, constructing pruned models, and visualizing pruning and erasing dependency graphs. It supports the HESSO optimizer and offers a sanity check for compliance testing on various DNNs. The repository also includes publications, installation instructions, quick start guides, and a roadmap for future enhancements and collaborations.
For similar tasks

awesome-transformer-nlp
This repository contains a hand-curated list of great machine (deep) learning resources for Natural Language Processing (NLP) with a focus on Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT), Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT), attention mechanism, Transformer architectures/networks, Chatbot, and transfer learning in NLP.

LLMs-from-scratch
This repository contains the code for coding, pretraining, and finetuning a GPT-like LLM and is the official code repository for the book Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch). In _Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch)_, you'll discover how LLMs work from the inside out. In this book, I'll guide you step by step through creating your own LLM, explaining each stage with clear text, diagrams, and examples. The method described in this book for training and developing your own small-but-functional model for educational purposes mirrors the approach used in creating large-scale foundational models such as those behind ChatGPT.

PaddleNLP
PaddleNLP is an easy-to-use and high-performance NLP library. It aggregates high-quality pre-trained models in the industry and provides out-of-the-box development experience, covering a model library for multiple NLP scenarios with industry practice examples to meet developers' flexible customization needs.

Tutorial
The Bookworm·Puyu large model training camp aims to promote the implementation of large models in more industries and provide developers with a more efficient platform for learning the development and application of large models. Within two weeks, you will learn the entire process of fine-tuning, deploying, and evaluating large models.

llms-from-scratch-cn
This repository provides a detailed tutorial on how to build your own large language model (LLM) from scratch. It includes all the code necessary to create a GPT-like LLM, covering the encoding, pre-training, and fine-tuning processes. The tutorial is written in a clear and concise style, with plenty of examples and illustrations to help you understand the concepts involved. It is suitable for developers and researchers with some programming experience who are interested in learning more about LLMs and how to build them.

LLMBook-zh.github.io
This book aims to provide readers with a comprehensive understanding of large language model technology, including its basic principles, key technologies, and application prospects. Through in-depth research and practice, we can continuously explore and improve large language model technology, and contribute to the development of the field of artificial intelligence.

LLM-Blender
LLM-Blender is a framework for ensembling large language models (LLMs) to achieve superior performance. It consists of two modules: PairRanker and GenFuser. PairRanker uses pairwise comparisons to distinguish between candidate outputs, while GenFuser merges the top-ranked candidates to create an improved output. LLM-Blender has been shown to significantly surpass the best LLMs and baseline ensembling methods across various metrics on the MixInstruct benchmark dataset.

SeaLLMs
SeaLLMs are a family of language models optimized for Southeast Asian (SEA) languages. They were pre-trained from Llama-2, on a tailored publicly-available dataset, which comprises texts in Vietnamese 🇻🇳, Indonesian 🇮🇩, Thai 🇹🇭, Malay 🇲🇾, Khmer🇰🇭, Lao🇱🇦, Tagalog🇵🇭 and Burmese🇲🇲. The SeaLLM-chat underwent supervised finetuning (SFT) and specialized self-preferencing DPO using a mix of public instruction data and a small number of queries used by SEA language native speakers in natural settings, which **adapt to the local cultural norms, customs, styles and laws in these areas**. SeaLLM-13b models exhibit superior performance across a wide spectrum of linguistic tasks and assistant-style instruction-following capabilities relative to comparable open-source models. Moreover, they outperform **ChatGPT-3.5** in non-Latin languages, such as Thai, Khmer, Lao, and Burmese.
For similar jobs

LLM-FineTuning-Large-Language-Models
This repository contains projects and notes on common practical techniques for fine-tuning Large Language Models (LLMs). It includes fine-tuning LLM notebooks, Colab links, LLM techniques and utils, and other smaller language models. The repository also provides links to YouTube videos explaining the concepts and techniques discussed in the notebooks.

lloco
LLoCO is a technique that learns documents offline through context compression and in-domain parameter-efficient finetuning using LoRA, which enables LLMs to handle long context efficiently.

camel
CAMEL is an open-source library designed for the study of autonomous and communicative agents. We believe that studying these agents on a large scale offers valuable insights into their behaviors, capabilities, and potential risks. To facilitate research in this field, we implement and support various types of agents, tasks, prompts, models, and simulated environments.

llm-baselines
LLM-baselines is a modular codebase to experiment with transformers, inspired from NanoGPT. It provides a quick and easy way to train and evaluate transformer models on a variety of datasets. The codebase is well-documented and easy to use, making it a great resource for researchers and practitioners alike.

python-tutorial-notebooks
This repository contains Jupyter-based tutorials for NLP, ML, AI in Python for classes in Computational Linguistics, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning (ML), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) at Indiana University.

EvalAI
EvalAI is an open-source platform for evaluating and comparing machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms at scale. It provides a central leaderboard and submission interface, making it easier for researchers to reproduce results mentioned in papers and perform reliable & accurate quantitative analysis. EvalAI also offers features such as custom evaluation protocols and phases, remote evaluation, evaluation inside environments, CLI support, portability, and faster evaluation.

Weekly-Top-LLM-Papers
This repository provides a curated list of weekly published Large Language Model (LLM) papers. It includes top important LLM papers for each week, organized by month and year. The papers are categorized into different time periods, making it easy to find the most recent and relevant research in the field of LLM.

self-llm
This project is a Chinese tutorial for domestic beginners based on the AutoDL platform, providing full-process guidance for various open-source large models, including environment configuration, local deployment, and efficient fine-tuning. It simplifies the deployment, use, and application process of open-source large models, enabling more ordinary students and researchers to better use open-source large models and helping open and free large models integrate into the lives of ordinary learners faster.