Prove
LiveProof-of-Work · Oct–Nov: every verified proof counts. 35 days leftAll outcomes
Skills

Learn LLMs from Scratch (AI Engineering Phase 10)

4 weeks · 2 milestones

Phase 10 of AI Engineering from Scratch: 24 free lessons, then one project of your own that is run, evaluated and documented. Part of the Varsity Curriculum: AI Engineering.

Milestone map

Milestone map

2 milestones

Do the phase's lessons in public

1–1 weeks (about 10 hrs/week, est)

Work through the 24 lessons of Phase 10: LLMs from Scratch from AI Engineering from Scratch (free) and keep the LLMs-from-scratch lessons' code and notebooks (tokenizer, data pipeline, pre-training a mini GPT, instruction tuning, DPO, evaluation, quantisation) in one public repo as you go. About 14 hours (est).

Proof required

Link your public repo with the LLMs-from-scratch lessons' code and notebooks (tokenizer, data pipeline, pre-training a mini GPT, instruction tuning, DPO, evaluation, quantisation), and show your self-check (quizzes passed, notebooks run, tests passing where they exist).

What gets checked

  • Each lesson's code runs and its quiz is passed where there is one.
  • The mini GPT trains and its loss goes down.
  • Evaluation numbers are reported before and after tuning.

Common mistakes

  • Copying the repo's solutions: verifiers read your history and ask about your code.
  • Skipping the self-check, then asking for review too early.

Powstik Guide

A public repo with the LLMs-from-scratch lessons' code and notebooks (tokenizer, data pipeline, pre-training a mini GPT, instruction tuning, DPO, evaluation, quantisation).

Steps

  1. Make a public repo for this phase.
  2. Do one lesson at a time and commit after each.
  3. Self-check: Run each lesson's code; it must work on your machine as the lesson shows. Run each lesson's notebook top to bottom; its outputs must match the lesson. Each lesson has a quiz (quiz.json, also on the course site): pass it.
  4. Write a short README: what is here and how to run it.
  5. Ask three people who know the topic to check it.

Template

README
Phase 10: LLMs from Scratch (AI Engineering from Scratch)
What is here:
How to run it:
Self-check result:
What was hardest:

What gets sent back

  • One big upload with no history.
  • Self-check not shown.
  • Code that does not run from the README.

Resources

Foundationstart here

Depthgo deeper

What a verifier looks for

  • Each lesson's code runs and its quiz is passed where there is one.
  • The mini GPT trains and its loss goes down.
  • Evaluation numbers are reported before and after tuning.
  • Ask about one choice in the code; the answer should be clear.

You'll sign in first, then come straight back here.

Train a tiny GPT end to end

2–4 weeks (6–10 hrs/week)

Use what you learned. Make a tiny GPT trained end to end: your tokenizer, pre-training on a corpus you choose, a small instruction-tuning step, and an evaluation before and after tuning. It must run, be evaluated and be documented.

Proof required

Link a tiny GPT trained end to end: your tokenizer, pre-training on a corpus you choose, a small instruction-tuning step, and an evaluation before and after tuning, with a README that says how to run it and what the evaluation found.

What gets checked

  • It trains from the README.
  • Evaluation before and after tuning is shown.
  • Sample outputs are included, with their limits stated.

Common mistakes

  • A demo with no evaluation.
  • Numbers without the data or code that produced them.

Powstik Guide

A tiny GPT trained end to end: your tokenizer, pre-training on a corpus you choose, a small instruction-tuning step, and an evaluation before and after tuning.

Steps

  1. Write one line: what it does and for whom.
  2. Build the smallest version that works.
  3. Write the evaluation first, then improve against it.
  4. Write the README with the results.
  5. Ask three people to check it.

Template

README
What it does:
How to run it:
How it was evaluated:
Results:
Limits:

What gets sent back

  • Does not run from the README.
  • No evaluation.
  • Claims more than the evaluation shows.

Resources

Foundationstart here

What a verifier looks for

  • It trains from the README.
  • Evaluation before and after tuning is shown.
  • Sample outputs are included, with their limits stated.
  • Run it, or watch it run: it must work, be evaluated and be documented.
  • Check that the work is the person's own.

You'll sign in first, then come straight back here.