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what is colibri fr?

justvugg/colibri — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-05-18

17,845CAudience · developerComplexity · 4/5Setup · hard

tl;dr

Runs a 744B-parameter GLM-5.2 AI model on a 25GB-RAM consumer machine by streaming experts from disk.

vibe map

mindmap
  root((colibri))
    What it does
      Runs 744B model locally
      Streams experts from disk
      Learns hot experts
    Tech stack
      Pure C engine
      GLM-5.2 MoE
      Optional CUDA
    Use cases
      Local LLM inference
      Dual SSD streaming
      Live routing dashboard
    Audience
      Developers
      AI hobbyists

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what do people make with this?

VIBE 1

Run a 744B-parameter GLM-5.2 model locally on a 25GB RAM machine.

VIBE 2

Stream mixture-of-experts weights from disk instead of loading the whole model into memory.

VIBE 3

Split model reads across two SSDs for faster expert streaming.

VIBE 4

Watch a live dashboard of which experts fire during inference.

what's the stack?

CGLM-5.2CUDA

how it stacks up fr

justvugg/colibriespressif/esp-idfbrunodev85/winlator
Stars17,84518,03717,588
LanguageCCC
Setup difficultyhardhardhard
Complexity4/54/54/5
Audiencedeveloperdevelopergeneral

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

how do i run it?

Difficulty · hard time til it works · 1h+

Needs about 25GB RAM and roughly 370GB of disk space to store the full expert set.

in plain english

Colibri is a C program that lets you run GLM-5.2, a huge 744 billion parameter AI language model, on an ordinary consumer computer with around 25 gigabytes of RAM, something that would normally require a datacenter's worth of memory. It manages this by keeping only the small part of the model that is always needed loaded in RAM, while streaming the rest from your hard drive or SSD only when it is actually needed for the current word being generated. The trick that makes this possible is how this type of AI model works internally. A model built this way, called a mixture of experts, only activates a small fraction of its total parameters for any single word it generates, roughly forty billion out of seven hundred forty four billion, and only about eleven gigabytes worth of those active parameters actually change from word to word. Colibri keeps the always used core of the model resident in memory, while the thousands of specialized expert components live on disk and get pulled in on demand, using a cache that learns which experts get used often and keeps those ready. The project compares this approach to how a just in time compiler works: rather than loading everything up front, it watches what is actually needed and stages that data just in time. The engine itself is described as a single C file with a few small header files, requiring no BLAS math library, no Python at runtime, and no GPU, though a GPU can be used if available to hold more experts in faster memory for better speed. If you have a second SSD available, the tool can split reads of the model across both drives at once to increase how fast experts can be streamed in, with the model mirrored across both and falling back gracefully if one drive is unavailable. The same program scales from a modest twenty five gigabyte laptop, where nearly everything streams from disk, up to larger machines where the whole model fits in memory and disk is not needed at all during normal use. It ships with a web dashboard that shows live metrics about which experts are firing, their storage tier, and overall performance.

prompts (copy fr)

prompt 1
Help me set up colibri to run GLM-5.2 on my machine with 25GB of RAM.
prompt 2
Explain how colibri decides which experts stay in RAM versus stream from disk.
prompt 3
Show me how to configure the dual-SSD mirror setup with COLI_MODEL_MIRROR.
prompt 4
Walk me through launching the ./coli web dashboard to see expert routing live.

Frequently asked questions

what is colibri fr?

Runs a 744B-parameter GLM-5.2 AI model on a 25GB-RAM consumer machine by streaming experts from disk.

What language is colibri written in?

Mainly C. The stack also includes C, GLM-5.2, CUDA.

How hard is colibri to set up?

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

Who is colibri for?

Mainly developer.

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