Can I run a model on my own machine?
Six questions, answered: you can tell which models you can download, whether one fits your laptop, and why the free one is smaller.
- 1Why can I run Llama on my laptop but not GPT?
Open weights vs closed API models, and model licenses · Beginner · 5 min
- 2Why does a 7B model need 16 GB of RAM?
Model memory: parameters × bytes, plus the KV cache · Beginner · 5 min
- 3How does a 30 GB model fit on my laptop?
Quantization (bits per weight) · Builder · 5 min
- 4Why is DeepSeek so cheap (and why is a 671B model fast)?
Mixture of Experts: active vs total parameters · Beginner · 5 min
- 5Why is the mini or flash model the free one?
Knowledge distillation (teacher and student models) · Beginner · 5 min
- 6Why does the free model feel dumber?
Model size, free vs paid tiers · Beginner · 5 min
- 7Why does it miscount the r’s in "strawberry"?
coming · opens from the tokens station
- 8How does it know "king" is close to "queen"?
coming · opens from the embeddings station
- 9How does it know what "it" refers to?
coming · opens from the attention station
- 10What's inside the box?
coming · opens from the layers station
- 11Does it plan what it's going to say?
coming · opens from the sampling station
- 12Why does the same prompt give different answers?
coming · opens from the sampling station
- 13How did it learn all this?
coming · opens from the layers station
- 14Why is it so polite (and so cautious)?
coming · opens from the layers station
- 15Why does it forget what I said 20 messages ago?
coming · opens from the tokens station
- 16Teach it my docs, or let it read them?
coming · opens from the embeddings station
- 17Why does it invent sources that don't exist?
coming · opens from the sampling station
- 18What’s an "agent", and why is everyone saying it?
coming · opens from the play station
- 19Why does it ‘think’ before answering?
coming · opens from the sampling station
- 20Why does the free tier say 429?
coming · opens from the tokens station
- 21How does it read a picture?
coming · opens from the tokens station
- 22Why is the second call cheaper?
coming · opens from the tokens station
- 23Why does it break my JSON?
coming · opens from the sampling station
- 24Why can a web page hijack my AI agent?
coming · opens from the play station
- 25How does AI draw a picture from noise?
coming · opens from the sampling station
- 26Why does the model ignore my instructions?
coming · opens from the tokens station
- 27Why does the answer appear word by word?
coming · opens from the sampling station
- 28Why does Vietnamese cost more tokens than English?
coming · opens from the tokens station
- 29Why doesn't it know about last week?
coming · opens from the play station