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what is colibri-hy3 fr?

eriktromp/colibri-hy3 — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-05-18

50CAudience · developerComplexity · 5/5Setup · hard

tl;dr

A pure C engine that runs Tencent's huge 295B-parameter Hy3 AI model on a consumer PC by streaming its experts from disk.

vibe map

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it does
      Streams model experts from disk
      Runs 295B model on 16GB RAM
      Converts weights to int4
    Tech stack
      Pure C
      CUDA optional
      coli CLI
    Use cases
      Chat with Hy3 locally
      Convert model weights
      Tune memory and VRAM budget
    Audience
      Developers
      AI hobbyists
    Requirements
      16GB RAM minimum
      ~150GB disk
      NVMe recommended

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filefunction / class

what do people make with this?

VIBE 1

Run a 295-billion-parameter AI model locally on a laptop-class machine with 16GB of RAM.

VIBE 2

Chat with the Hy3 model through a command line tool without cloud API costs.

VIBE 3

Convert Hy3's original weight files into a disk-streaming compatible format.

VIBE 4

Tune memory, VRAM, and disk read settings to balance speed against RAM usage.

what's the stack?

CCUDAPython

how it stacks up fr

eriktromp/colibri-hy3dantiicu/wine-nxhuobuilds/quadfs_flight_controller
Stars504848
LanguageCCC
Setup difficultyhardhardhard
Complexity5/55/55/5
Audiencedeveloperdeveloperdeveloper

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

how do i run it?

Difficulty · hard time til it works · 1day+

Requires downloading a ~142GB model, compiling C code, and ideally a CUDA-capable GPU plus fast NVMe disk.

in plain english

This project lets you run a very large AI language model, Tencent's Hy3, on an ordinary consumer computer instead of the expensive server hardware such a model would normally need. Hy3 has 295 billion parameters in total, but it is built as a mixture of experts model, meaning only a smaller portion, about 21 billion parameters, is actively used for any single response. This tool takes advantage of that by keeping only a small always-needed part of the model, around 5 gigabytes, loaded in memory, while the rest of the model's specialized parts stream from your hard drive or solid state drive as needed, and optionally from your graphics card's memory too. The project is a port of an existing engine called colibri, rewritten to support this specific model, and it is written entirely in C with no external dependencies. It includes the inference engine itself, a tool for converting the model's original weight files into a compressed format this engine can read, and a command line tool called coli for chatting with the model, running it as a server, converting weights, planning memory usage, and diagnosing setup problems. The README explains that running it requires downloading a large, pre-converted version of the model from Hugging Face, roughly 142 gigabytes on disk, since the engine does not work with common formats like GGUF. It walks through different memory setups: a lean profile for a 16 gigabyte RAM machine with a 16 gigabyte graphics card, a more comfortable profile for machines with 32 to 62 gigabytes of RAM, and a CPU only option with no graphics card at all, which is slower but still works. There is also a long list of tuning options for advanced users, covering things like context length, disk read methods, and memory caps. This project would suit developers or hobbyists who want to experiment with a very large language model on their own hardware without needing a data center, and who are comfortable working with the command line and compiling C code.

prompts (copy fr)

prompt 1
Walk me through downloading and running Hy3 with this engine on a 16GB RAM machine.
prompt 2
Explain how expert streaming from disk lets this engine run a 295B model without loading it fully into RAM.
prompt 3
Help me tune the --ram and --vram flags for my specific hardware.
prompt 4
Show me how to convert the Hy3 FP8 weights myself using convert_hy3.py.

Frequently asked questions

what is colibri-hy3 fr?

A pure C engine that runs Tencent's huge 295B-parameter Hy3 AI model on a consumer PC by streaming its experts from disk.

What language is colibri-hy3 written in?

Mainly C. The stack also includes C, CUDA, Python.

How hard is colibri-hy3 to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated hard, with roughly 1day+ to a first successful run.

Who is colibri-hy3 for?

Mainly developer.

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