microkimi

A large-model engine in pure Rust. Zero dependencies. Measured, not promised.

One small binary runs Kimi K3, DeepSeek-V4, and the Qwen3.5 family (Qwen3.8-27B is its default model when converted). No Python. No crates. No SDK to install: the GPU paths open Metal and the CUDA driver at run time. cargo build, point it at a model, go.

• Fast. Qwen3.8-27B on one NVIDIA L4: 12 tokens per second, the whole model resident on a single 24 GB GPU - where llama.cpp's Q8_0 needs four. On an Apple M5, prompts read at over 1,000 tokens per second, ahead of llama.cpp on CPU. The numbers.
• Exact. The default path is bit-exact f32. Every speed mode is measured against it and quoted honestly.
• Time travel. Conversations are version-controlled. Fork any past state. Diff two answers. Merge two branches back into one mind.
• Serve it. An OpenAI-compatible API lives in the same binary: microkimi serve.

A Python toolkit under nano/graft/ handles model surgery - compatibility scans, expert utility measurement, feed-forward transfer - across Qwen, DeepSeek, Gemma and llama-style checkpoints. See nano/graft/README.md.

This is a framework for developers - an engine and a test model, not a product for end-users.

Almost all of the code was written by Kimi K3 itself - the quiet beauty of an LLM giving birth to another.

The moon loved the sun, but they could never meet, so every night, they would go to the park to play. Every night, the moon danced with the stars, and they were very happy, playing together every day. The end.

• nanokimi-0.2b, running on microkimi

Get started

All you need is Rust (rustup). Download nanokimi-0.2b.bin + vocab_nano.json from Releases into the repo root, then:

cargo build --release
./target/release/microkimi run "Once upon a time, a kind dragon lived in a cave. Every morning, he" \
  --model nanokimi-0.2b.bin --max-new 12 --raw
# answer:  would go to the park and play with his friends.

./target/release/microkimi chat --model nanokimi-0.2b.bin --raw

To run a real Qwen checkpoint:

./target/release/microkimi convert-qwen --source /path/to/Qwen3.5-0.8B --out qwen.bin
./target/release/microkimi chat --model qwen.bin

Models

model	what it is	guide
nanokimi-0.2b	0.2B Kimi K3, trained from scratch	KIMI.md
converted Qwen3.5 / 3.6 / 3.8	any Qwen3.5-family text checkpoint, MoE or dense	QWEN.md
microkimi-debug / microdeepseek-debug	synthetic architecture demos for parity tests	KIMI.md, DEEPSEEK.md

Go deeper

• RESULTS.md - benchmarks vs llama.cpp, same machine, same model.
• BENCH.md - how to reproduce every number.
• QWEN.md - the Qwen runtime: conversion, Metal and CUDA, speculative decoding, serving, conversation version control.
• KIMI.md - the K3 engine: expert streaming, memory packs, slicing, adapters.
• DEEPSEEK.md - the DeepSeek-V4 runtime.

License

MIT - see LICENSE. Credits in ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.md.