From-scratch 8M-parameter LLM: dev blogs the whole training journey

the-random-guy-2002 · reddit · 2026-11-01

A developer built and trained a tiny 8M-parameter LLM from scratch in PyTorch as a lab for implementing ideas from research papers, documenting everything in candid blog posts.

So far: one post on building a Transformer without tutorials, another on 60,000 training steps, hitting a loss plateau, and the simple fix that resolved it. Next up: KV caching, PagedAttention, and Orca. The post (punctuated with an "I am ready to get hurt again" meme) asks the community whether such experiment writeups are welcome — purely for learning and feedback, not promotion.

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