rain-1 / On Llamafile.md
The claim is that it is "bringing LLMs to the people", but you could already run an LLM - which is a large binary file containing lots of floating point numbers - by using llama.cpp.
Llamafile joins a compiled binary program to run LLMs with a weights binary into a single file. This isn't a useful goal. you could simply distribute a zip containing an .exe and a weights file together. Or better still: Decouple the program that runs these chatbots from the chatbot weights.
Imagine if PNG files were also an executable that could pop open a window that displays a PNG on your computer. There is a reason we don't do this: It's not good engineering.
There is a claim that llamafile is simpler or more convenient, because it's one thing. But it's actually not hard to download two things: an .exe for windows or mac or whatever and an LLM binary.
