# microgpt by Andrej Karpathy

37 Hacker News commenters recommended microgpt by Andrej Karpathy and 7 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended as a tiny, readable GPT in pure Python that shows the whole training pipeline end-to-end. Caveat: some find the accompanying site assumes too much prior knowledge.

## Why people recommend it

- Explains LLM internals clearly, end-to-end (7 comments): "What I find most valuable about this kind of project is how it forces you to understand the entire pipeline end-to-end." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47203987)) "does an awesome job explaining the very foundations of LLMs making it super understandable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49430303)) "Microgpt is really good, if you want to understand exactly what happens." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48422365))
- Small, readable code you can run (7 comments): "I can actually run the training loops, which makes sense given the simplicity of the original microgpt" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47032810)) "It's so small and so fast to train, you can really dig deep into the optimization landscape." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47267158)) "Andrej's code is really quite poetic, I love how much it packs into such a concise program" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47203703))
- Good for learning and education (4 comments): "it's a great learning tool and it shows it can be done concisely" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47203037)) "projects like this can spark creativity and critical thinking" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47205267)) "a project like this can be invaluable for education" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47202986))
- Interactive visualizations aid understanding (2 comments): "Great stuff! I wrote an interactive blogpost that walks through the code and visualizes it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47204303)) "I love the visualizations, especially the next token probabilities" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47138298))

## What people warn about

- Site seen as thin, AI-generated (2 comments): "The attached website is a fully ai-generated "visualization" based on the original blog post with little added." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47211703)) "this is just a low-quality post with mostly empty words" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47042876))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [nanoGPT by Andrej Karpathy](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nanogpt.md): 8 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "microgpt by Andrej Karpathy", https://hackerapproved.com/p/microgpt/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).