blackboxml 0.5.0

Lightweight, framework-agnostic ML experiment tracker.

blackboxml

ML experiment tracking without the infrastructure. Log metrics from any training loop to local JSON, inspect runs from the CLI.

Works with PyTorch, Keras, scikit-learn, or plain Python.

Install

pip install blackboxml
pip install blackboxml[keras]  # optional TensorFlow support

Usage

@track decorator

from blackboxml import track, MetricStore

@track(name="resnet_cifar10", tags=["pytorch", "cifar10"])
def train():
    metrics = MetricStore()
    for epoch in range(10):
        metrics.reset()
        for batch in dataloader:
            loss, acc = train_step(batch)
            metrics.update({"loss": loss, "acc": acc}, n=len(batch))
        yield metrics.compute()

train()

Run context manager

from blackboxml import Run

with Run(name="resnet_cifar10", tags=["pytorch"]) as run:
    for epoch in range(10):
        run.log({"loss": train_one_epoch(), "epoch": epoch})

Keras callback

from blackboxml.callback import BlackBoxCallback

model.fit(x_train, y_train, epochs=10,
          callbacks=[BlackBoxCallback(name="lstm_nlp", tags=["keras"])])

CLI

$ bbml runs
NAME              DATE                 DURATION  STEPS  TAGS
----------------------------------------------------------------
resnet_cifar10    2026-03-10 14:22:01    13m 46s     10  pytorch, cifar10
lstm_nlp          2026-03-10 11:05:33     4m 12s      5  keras

$ bbml show resnet_cifar10
$ bbml clean

What gets logged

Each run saves to blackboxml_logs/<name>_<timestamp>/run.json:

{
  "name": "resnet_cifar10",
  "tags": ["pytorch", "cifar10"],
  "environment": {
    "git_commit": "a3f91bc",
    "git_dirty": false,
    "python": "3.11.2",
    "torch": "2.3.0",
    "hostname": "lab-gpu-01"
  },
  "start": "2026-03-10T14:22:01",
  "end": "2026-03-10T14:35:47",
  "duration_seconds": 826,
  "steps": [
    {"loss": 0.842, "acc": 0.65},
    {"loss": 0.671, "acc": 0.78}
  ]
}

Git commit, Python version, framework versions, and hostname are captured automatically.

Releases

Version	Date	What changed
0.1.0	Apr 2025	Initial release — Keras auto-logging, visualise_metrics
0.2.0	Jul 2025	Type hints, logging module, error handling
0.5.0	Mar 2026	Framework-agnostic rewrite — @track, Run, MetricStore, bbml CLI

Contributing

See Contributing Guidelines to get started. Bug reports, feature requests, and pull requests are welcome.

• Bug reports
• Feature requests
• Security policy
• Code of conduct

License

Apache License 2.0

Author

Stuart Asiimwe