# Strangers pretrained a language model with HF PRs and a cron job

> Source: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49141174>
> Published: 2026-08-02 04:42:50+00:00

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Last week a few of us pretrained a 15M-parameter language model from scratch —
past its Chinchilla-optimal token budget — with no cluster, no server, and no
budget. The training coordinator is a GitHub Actions cron job. The gradients
are pull requests. By the end, someone we'd never met had joined and trained
23M tokens of it.
github.com/commonsense-ai/coop — Model + card · huggingface.co/commonsense-ai/tinystories-15m — Gradient inbox — Leaderboard | |||||||||||
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