ANDREA-12M
Autonomous Neural Data Recipe for Education and Agency
A 12.8M parameter language model grown on a single RTX 4090 using a bandit-controlled curriculum. Part of the permacomputer project — open source, open data, open weights.
Model Details
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Parameters | 12.8M |
| Architecture | Transformer decoder, 384d/12h/6L |
| Embedding dim | 384 |
| Heads | 12 |
| Layers | 6 |
| Context | 1024 tokens |
| Tokenizer | Harris morpheme (2048 segments, 2305 vocab) |
| Training steps | 43,587 |
| Final SMMA loss | 2.0 |
| Best single-step loss | 0.21 |
| Training time | ~72 hours |
| Hardware | Single NVIDIA RTX 4090 (24GB VRAM, 1.4GB used) |
| CUDA engine | microgpt_cuda.cu (custom, FP32) |
| Born | 2026-03-21 12:53 UTC / 08:53 EST |
| License | AGPL-3.0 |
Files
| File | Step | Description |
|---|---|---|
ANDREA-12M.bin |
43,587 | Final checkpoint (SMMA 2.0) |
ANDREA-12M-best.bin |
42,300 | Best checkpoint (lowest loss during training) |
harris_segments.json |
— | Harris tokenizer segments (required for inference and fine-tuning) |
Checkpoint format
Binary, little-endian: [int32 step][int32 n_params][n_params × float32 weights][n_params × float32 m][n_params × float32 v]
- Weights: model parameters (12.8M floats, ~49MB)
- m: Adam first moment (same size)
- v: Adam second moment (same size)
- Total: ~147MB per checkpoint
Use either checkpoint to resume fine-tuning (weights + optimizer state preserved)
or extract weights only for inference (first n_params floats after the 8-byte header).
Training Data
Trained on a curated mix of open conversational and educational data:
- NousResearch/Hermes-3-Dataset (general, creative, roleplay) — 590K conversations
- Dictionary — 88K word definitions distilled from Hermes 3 8B
- Gutenberg — public domain literature (Project Gutenberg)
- Additional: chat, smoltalk, oasst, dolly, IRC, repo-docs
Data mix controlled by a UCB1 multi-armed bandit with dice-based phase control. The bandit dynamically adjusts source weights during training based on per-source loss trajectories. Full curriculum specification in the white paper.
Training Recipe
- Harris morpheme tokenizer (2048 segments)
- Cosine LR schedule with warm restart at step 25K (0.0004 peak)
- Phase-based bandit: 2 focus arms, 1d3 dice, source floors
- Checkpoints every 100 steps, SIGTERM-safe
- Per-source reward attribution, epoch penalty, coverage tracking
Capabilities
ANDREA-12M learns patterns, not facts. At 12.8M parameters it produces:
- Correct Q&A turn structure (
> question / < answer) - Definition-style responses
- Multi-sentence outputs with plausible grammar
- Instruction-following scaffolding ("explain", "define", "describe")
It does NOT produce factually accurate content — it's a pattern machine. Factual accuracy requires scaling to ANDREA-120M (planned).
Usage
# Inference via microgpt
from microgpt import load_model, generate_fast
model = load_model('ANDREA-12M.json')
results = generate_fast(model['state_dict'], model['uchars'], model['bos'],
384, 12, 6, 1024, prefix='> what is an apple? / <')
print(results[0][0])
White Paper
ANDREA-12M-WHITEPAPER.pdf — full technical paper covering architecture, bandit curriculum, data sources, training recipe, and results.
Source: whitepaper/ANDREA/WHITEPAPER.rst in the uncloseai-cli repository.
Citation
ANDREA: Autonomous Neural Data Recipe for Education and Agency
TimeHexOn, foxhop, russell@unturf
March 2026, permacomputer.com
License
AGPL-3.0. Code outlasts authors. Infrastructure outlasts builders.
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