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microgpt

`microgpt.py`, a minimal, dependency-free Python implementation of a GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) model for training and inference. It includes a complete autograd system, a character-level tokenizer, and a transformer with one layer, an embedding dimension of 16, and a context window of 16 tokens. The code is designed to be the most atomic version of the algorithm, prioritizing clarity over efficiency.

read6 min views19 publishedFeb 11, 2026

""" The most atomic way to train and run inference for a GPT in pure, dependency-free Python. This file is the complete algorithm. Everything else is just efficiency.

@karpathy """

import os       # os.path.exists
import math     # math.log, math.exp
import random   # random.seed, random.choices, random.gauss, random.shuffle

random.seed(42) # Let there be order among chaos

if not os.path.exists('input.txt'):
    import urllib.request
    names_url = 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/karpathy/makemore/988aa59/names.txt'
    urllib.request.urlretrieve(names_url, 'input.txt')
docs = [line.strip() for line in open('input.txt') if line.strip()]
random.shuffle(docs)
print(f"num docs: {len(docs)}")

uchars = sorted(set(''.join(docs))) # unique characters in the dataset become token ids 0..n-1
BOS = len(uchars) # token id for a special Beginning of Sequence (BOS) token

vocab_size = len(uchars) + 1 # total number of unique tokens, +1 is for BOS

print(f"vocab size: {vocab_size}")

class Value:
    __slots__ = ('data', 'grad', '_children', '_local_grads') # Python optimization for memory usage

    def __init__(self, data, children=(), local_grads=()):
        self.data = data                # scalar value of this node calculated during forward pass
        self.grad = 0                   # derivative of the loss w.r.t. this node, calculated in backward pass
        self._children = children       # children of this node in the computation graph
        self._local_grads = local_grads # local derivative of this node w.r.t. its children

    def __add__(self, other):
        other = other if isinstance(other, Value) else Value(other)
        return Value(self.data + other.data, (self, other), (1, 1))

    def __mul__(self, other):
        other = other if isinstance(other, Value) else Value(other)
        return Value(self.data * other.data, (self, other), (other.data, self.data))

    def __pow__(self, other): return Value(self.data**other, (self,), (other * self.data**(other-1),))
    def log(self): return Value(math.log(self.data), (self,), (1/self.data,))
    def exp(self): return Value(math.exp(self.data), (self,), (math.exp(self.data),))
    def relu(self): return Value(max(0, self.data), (self,), (float(self.data > 0),))
    def __neg__(self): return self * -1
    def __radd__(self, other): return self + other
    def __sub__(self, other): return self + (-other)
    def __rsub__(self, other): return other + (-self)
    def __rmul__(self, other): return self * other
    def __truediv__(self, other): return self * other**-1
    def __rtruediv__(self, other): return other * self**-1

    def backward(self):
        topo = []
        visited = set()
        def build_topo(v):
            if v not in visited:
                visited.add(v)
                for child in v._children:
                    build_topo(child)
                topo.append(v)
        build_topo(self)
        self.grad = 1
        for v in reversed(topo):
            for child, local_grad in zip(v._children, v._local_grads):
                child.grad += local_grad * v.grad

n_layer = 1 # depth of the transformer neural network (number of layers) n_embd = 16 # width of the network (embedding dimension) block_size = 16 # maximum context length of the attention window (note: the longest name is 15 characters) n_head = 4 # number of attention heads head_dim = n_embd // n_head # derived dimension of each head

matrix = lambda nout, nin, std=0.08: [[Value(random.gauss(0, std)) for _ in range(nin)] for _ in range(nout)]
state_dict = {'wte': matrix(vocab_size, n_embd), 'wpe': matrix(block_size, n_embd), 'lm_head': matrix(vocab_size, n_embd)}
for i in range(n_layer):
    state_dict[f'layer{i}.attn_wq'] = matrix(n_embd, n_embd)
    state_dict[f'layer{i}.attn_wk'] = matrix(n_embd, n_embd)
    state_dict[f'layer{i}.attn_wv'] = matrix(n_embd, n_embd)
    state_dict[f'layer{i}.attn_wo'] = matrix(n_embd, n_embd)
    state_dict[f'layer{i}.mlp_fc1'] = matrix(4 * n_embd, n_embd)
    state_dict[f'layer{i}.mlp_fc2'] = matrix(n_embd, 4 * n_embd)
params = [p for mat in state_dict.values() for row in mat for p in row] # flatten params into a single list[Value]
print(f"num params: {len(params)}")

def linear(x, w):
    return [sum(wi * xi for wi, xi in zip(wo, x)) for wo in w]

def softmax(logits):
    max_val = max(val.data for val in logits)
    exps = [(val - max_val).exp() for val in logits]
    total = sum(exps)
    return [e / total for e in exps]

def rmsnorm(x):
    ms = sum(xi * xi for xi in x) / len(x)
    scale = (ms + 1e-5) ** -0.5
    return [xi * scale for xi in x]

def gpt(token_id, pos_id, keys, values):
    tok_emb = state_dict['wte'][token_id] # token embedding
    pos_emb = state_dict['wpe'][pos_id] # position embedding
    x = [t + p for t, p in zip(tok_emb, pos_emb)] # joint token and position embedding
    x = rmsnorm(x) # note: not redundant due to backward pass via the residual connection

    for li in range(n_layer):
        x_residual = x
        x = rmsnorm(x)
        q = linear(x, state_dict[f'layer{li}.attn_wq'])
        k = linear(x, state_dict[f'layer{li}.attn_wk'])
        v = linear(x, state_dict[f'layer{li}.attn_wv'])
        keys[li].append(k)
        values[li].append(v)
        x_attn = []
        for h in range(n_head):
            hs = h * head_dim
            q_h = q[hs:hs+head_dim]
            k_h = [ki[hs:hs+head_dim] for ki in keys[li]]
            v_h = [vi[hs:hs+head_dim] for vi in values[li]]
            attn_logits = [sum(q_h[j] * k_h[t][j] for j in range(head_dim)) / head_dim**0.5 for t in range(len(k_h))]
            attn_weights = softmax(attn_logits)
            head_out = [sum(attn_weights[t] * v_h[t][j] for t in range(len(v_h))) for j in range(head_dim)]
            x_attn.extend(head_out)
        x = linear(x_attn, state_dict[f'layer{li}.attn_wo'])
        x = [a + b for a, b in zip(x, x_residual)]
        x_residual = x
        x = rmsnorm(x)
        x = linear(x, state_dict[f'layer{li}.mlp_fc1'])
        x = [xi.relu() for xi in x]
        x = linear(x, state_dict[f'layer{li}.mlp_fc2'])
        x = [a + b for a, b in zip(x, x_residual)]

    logits = linear(x, state_dict['lm_head'])
    return logits

learning_rate, beta1, beta2, eps_adam = 0.01, 0.85, 0.99, 1e-8

m = [0.0] * len(params) # first moment buffer
v = [0.0] * len(params) # second moment buffer

num_steps = 1000 # number of training steps

for step in range(num_steps):

    doc = docs[step % len(docs)]
    tokens = [BOS] + [uchars.index(ch) for ch in doc] + [BOS]
    n = min(block_size, len(tokens) - 1)

    keys, values = [[] for _ in range(n_layer)], [[] for _ in range(n_layer)]
    losses = []
    for pos_id in range(n):
        token_id, target_id = tokens[pos_id], tokens[pos_id + 1]
        logits = gpt(token_id, pos_id, keys, values)
        probs = softmax(logits)
        loss_t = -probs[target_id].log()
        losses.append(loss_t)
    loss = (1 / n) * sum(losses) # final average loss over the document sequence. May yours be low.

    loss.backward()

    lr_t = learning_rate * (1 - step / num_steps) # linear learning rate decay
    for i, p in enumerate(params):
        m[i] = beta1 * m[i] + (1 - beta1) * p.grad
        v[i] = beta2 * v[i] + (1 - beta2) * p.grad ** 2
        m_hat = m[i] / (1 - beta1 ** (step + 1))
        v_hat = v[i] / (1 - beta2 ** (step + 1))
        p.data -= lr_t * m_hat / (v_hat ** 0.5 + eps_adam)
        p.grad = 0

    print(f"step {step+1:4d} / {num_steps:4d} | loss {loss.data:.4f}", end='\r')

temperature = 0.5 # in (0, 1], control the "creativity" of generated text, low to high

print("\n--- inference (new, hallucinated names) ---")
for sample_idx in range(20):
    keys, values = [[] for _ in range(n_layer)], [[] for _ in range(n_layer)]
    token_id = BOS
    sample = []
    for pos_id in range(block_size):
        logits = gpt(token_id, pos_id, keys, values)
        probs = softmax([l / temperature for l in logits])
        token_id = random.choices(range(vocab_size), weights=[p.data for p in probs])[0]
        if token_id == BOS:
            break
        sample.append(uchars[token_id])
    print(f"sample {sample_idx+1:2d}: {''.join(sample)}")
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