Key differences:
nanoGPT: - Minimal reference implementation (~300 lines) - Educational code for understanding transformers - Requires manual setup and configuration - Great for learning the internals
create-llm: - Production-ready scaffolding tool (like create-next-app) - One command: npx create-llm → complete project ready - Multiple templates (nano/tiny/small/base) - Built-in validation (warns about overfitting, vocab mismatches) - Includes tokenizer training, evaluation, deployment tools - Auto-detects issues before you waste GPU time
Think of it as: nanoGPT is the reference, create-llm is the framework.
nanoGPT teaches you HOW it works. create-llm lets you BUILD with what you learned.
You can actually use nanoGPT's architecture in create-llm templates - they're complementary tools!