Introducing Cagliostro-v3, our new 146M parameter language model trained completely from scratch.
The run isn’t even finished yet.
At the current checkpoint:
• 146M parameters • 72.7B / 75B tokens trained • 26.27 Open SLM Index • 43.80 ArithMark-3 • Trained on a single RTX 5090 • ~90K to 103K tokens/sec during training • ~9 days for the full run • Apache 2.0
For some context, SmolLM2-135M scores 27.13 on the same Index after being trained on roughly 2 trillion tokens.
Cagliostro-v3 is currently at 26.27 with only ~72.7B.
That’s around 27x fewer training tokens.
The model also currently Hold the number 3rd spot for ArithMark-3, scoring 43.80
This wasn’t achieved by just throwing more tokens at the model. A huge part of v3 has been figuring out architecture, data mixture, and training dynamics at this scale.
The model uses a custom 30-layer decoder architecture with grouped-query attention and cross-head subspace attenuation, SwiGLU, RMSNorm, RoPE, tied embeddings, and a warmup-stable-decay training schedule.
During cooldown we also substantially shifted the data mixture toward higher-quality synthetic textbook and mathematics data, with the mathematics share increasing from 10% to 28%.
And everything is open.
The repository contains the training history with checkpoints pushed roughly every 30 minutes, so you can inspect how the model evolved throughout training rather than only seeing the final weights.
This is still a pre-final checkpoint. We have roughly 2.3B tokens left and the learning-rate cooldown is still running.
So 26.27 isn’t the final number.
Really excited to see where the last part of the run lands.
We trained a 10.9M byte-level recurrent Transformer on L3 and L6. (Loop 3 and Loop 6)
Yet L4/L5 improved too, L8 held up, and the L3→L6 gain grew during training.
Same weights. More compute. Better predictions.
This is a new architecture for effective compute after several steps beyond original training!
We mixed and matched components like time and mhc into an ouro-like byte-level language model and the result is BET, a byte-level step-elastic transformer that can run computation steps without significant degradation.
One of the coolest parts of this training was discovering how Gradient Descent decided to use the first layer as what we would consider a scratchpad! Totally destroyed for the decoder but somehow makes total sense for the next layer!
I believe looped-transformers are the future of edge computing and this is a first step towards it.
The SLM Consortium has begun work on a safety dataset for Small Language Models, with the creation of the dataset being headed by @wayneworkman2012
The dataset will focus on refusals and redirects surrounding dangerous or extreme sexual content, designed to be shaped sized appropriately for SLMs, without significantly lowering benchmark performance.
I don't know what to feel about it. But would be great if huggingface gets something similar to Kaggle with free GPU hours (or even days) for training.
- Complete modern UI redesign - Adds support for Qwen3.5 0.8B, LFM2.5 230M,350M, SmolLM2 360M, Gemma 3 270M. - Adds Q7,Q6,Q5,Q3,Q1 quantization formats with a easy to use precision slider - And more!
The new UI includes: - New 1024×768 High Quality interface. - Photographic QOI background. - Transparent BananaMind, CPU, cube, mouse, and Send icons. - Proper bitmap cursor. - Rounded translucent panels and cards. - Modern model-loading progress window. - Redesigned inference screen with response and prompt panels. - Localized redraws for the cursor, clicks, loading progress, and precision slider.
Notice: Qwen3.5 0.8B currently generates garbled text, it will be fixed tomorrow.