Why it matters
Building tokenizer and attention code yourself makes token-cost math tangible: you see exactly where compute and context length turn into dollars, instead of treating a model as a black-box API call.
The tokenmaxxing angle
Tokenization choices made in this exercise directly set per-request token counts downstream; understanding attention's cost scaling is a first step toward reasoning about context-window pricing and routing tradeoffs.
From the organizers
Hosted by Mark R. at Boston Public Library's Mezzanine Study Room 3; the group works through Stanford CS336 ("Language Modeling from Scratch") Assignment 1 during the session.