Overview
nanogpt is an open-source productivity skill for Claude Code and compatible agents, published by Orchestra-Research. Its author describes it as: “Educational GPT implementation in ~300 lines. Reproduces GPT-2 (124M) on OpenWebText. Clean, hackable code for learning transformers. By Andrej Karpathy. Perfect for understanding GPT architecture from scratch. Train…”. The project has 12k stars on GitHub and is available under the MIT license. Add it to your setup with `/plugin marketplace add Orchestra-Research/AI-Research-SKILLs`.
What nanogpt does
nanoGPT is a simplified GPT implementation designed for learning and experimentation.
What’s inside
The SKILL.md for nanogpt is organised into these sections:
- Quick start
- Common workflows
- Workflow 1: Character-level Shakespeare
- Workflow 2: Reproduce GPT-2 (124M)
- Workflow 3: Fine-tune pretrained GPT-2
- Workflow 4: Custom dataset
- When to use vs alternatives
- Common issues
- Advanced topics
- Hardware requirements
- Resources
Installation
Add nanogpt to your agent with:
/plugin marketplace add Orchestra-Research/AI-Research-SKILLsReview a skill’s source before installing it — skills can instruct your agent to run commands. This command comes from the skill’s public repository, which is the source of truth for setup steps. New to skills? Read how to install Claude Code skills.
Supported agents
- Claude Code — ships a claude code plugin marketplace
- Codex — declared in the repository topics
License
nanogpt is published under the MIT license.
Strengths
- Clear MIT license — safe to read and adapt within its terms
- Ships in Orchestra-Research/AI-Research-SKILLs, an established project with 11,807 GitHub stars
- Works with Claude Code, Codex
Author
Topics
Frequently asked questions
- What does nanogpt do?
- Educational GPT implementation in ~300 lines. Reproduces GPT-2 (124M) on OpenWebText. Clean, hackable code for learning transformers. By Andrej Karpathy. Perfect for understanding GPT architecture from scratch. Train on Shakespeare (CPU) or OpenWebText (multi-GPU).
- How do I install nanogpt?
- Run /plugin marketplace add Orchestra-Research/AI-Research-SKILLs in your agent, then reload your skills. Review the source at https://github.com/Orchestra-Research/AI-Research-SKILLs before installing.
- Is nanogpt free to use?
- Yes. nanogpt is free and open source under the MIT license, so you can read, run, and adapt it within that license's terms.
- Which agents does nanogpt work with?
- nanogpt lists Claude Code and Codex — named in its SKILL.md, its plugin marketplace or its repository topics. Skills use the portable SKILL.md format, so other agents that read that format may load it too.
- Where does nanogpt come from?
- nanogpt ships inside Orchestra-Research/AI-Research-SKILLs, a repository that contains 41 catalogued skills in total. The repository's 11,807 GitHub stars apply to that whole collection, not to this skill on its own.