Free online guide covers LLMs from first principles to local deployment
JFPuget · x · 2026-09-28
Ahmad Osman has published a free, comprehensive online guide to understanding LLMs from first principles, covering two major parts:
Model mechanics
- Fundamentals: tokens/tokenizers, Transformers, attention, KV cache, prefill vs decode, decoding controls
- Engineering topics: model packages, chat templates, long context, RAG, agents/tools, fine-tuning, multimodal models
Local deployment
- What "local" really means, open-weight vs open-source
- Quantization, VRAM math, hardware tiers
- File formats and load safety, runtimes and serving modes
- Model selection, privacy, failure modes, benchmarks, and practical setup paths
A solid bookmark for anyone who wants to systematically learn how LLMs work and run them locally.
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