LLM Ripper

A production-oriented framework for modular deconstruction, analysis, and recomposition of knowledge in Transformer-based language models.

• Extract interpretable components from LLMs (embeddings, heads, FFNs)
• Analyze and catalog attention/MLP behaviors
• Transplant knowledge across models with safety gates
• Validate outcomes with quantitative checks and reports

Table of contents

• Features
• Installation
• Quickstart
• CLI overview
• Examples
• Configuration
• Architecture
• Development
• Troubleshooting
• License

Features

• Modular pipeline: capture → analyze → extract → transplant → validate
• Safe model loading with explicit --trust-remote-code flow
• Reproducible runs with standardized artifact layout (see RunContext)
• Studio (static) viewer for quick inspection of outputs
• Interop utilities for adapters and merges

Installation

pip install -r requirements.txt
pip install -e .  # editable install for development
# Optional extras
# pip install .[viz]
# pip install .[spacy]
# pip install .[wandb]
# pip install .[nlp]

GPU users: see make install-cuda to install a CUDA-enabled torch build.

Beginner-friendly Quickstart

New to ML repos? Start here.

# 1) Set up your environment
python -m venv .venv
# Windows: .venv\\Scripts\\activate
# macOS/Linux:
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
pip install -e .
pre-commit install

# 2) Run the beginner demo (no downloads)
make beginner

This will create a demo run and open the Studio at http://localhost:8000.

For a more complete flow, see Quickstart below.

Quickstart

Minimal end-to-end using provided Makefile targets (customize variables):

# 1) Extract components to a knowledge bank directory
make extract MODEL=<hf_model_or_path> OUT=./knowledge_bank DEVICE=cuda E8=1 TRUST=0

# 2) Capture activations (optional)
make capture MODEL=<hf_model_or_path> ACT=./activations.h5 DEVICE=cuda E8=1

# 3) Analyze knowledge bank and activations
make analyze OUT=./knowledge_bank ACT=./activations.h5 ANALYSIS=./analysis DEVICE=cuda

# 4) Transplant from source KB to a target model
make transplant OUT=./knowledge_bank MODEL=<target_model> TRANSPLANTED=./transplanted DEVICE=cuda

# 5) Validate the transplanted model
make validate TRANSPLANTED=./transplanted MODEL=<baseline_model> VALIDATION=./validation_results DEVICE=cuda

Prefer CLI directly?

python -m llm_ripper.cli extract --model <hf_model> --output-dir ./knowledge_bank --device cuda
python -m llm_ripper.cli analyze --knowledge-bank ./knowledge_bank --activations ./activations.h5 --output-dir ./analysis
python -m llm_ripper.cli transplant --source ./knowledge_bank --target <target_model> --output-dir ./transplanted
python -m llm_ripper.cli validate --model ./transplanted --baseline <baseline_model> --output-dir ./validation_results

CLI overview

python -m llm_ripper.cli --help

• extract — build a knowledge bank from a donor model
• capture — collect activations into HDF5 or similar formats
• analyze — run analyses over KB/activations and produce catalogs
• transplant — inject selected components into a target model
• validate — run quantitative and qualitative checks on outputs
• inspect — quick JSON summary of a KB
• trace, uq, report, merge, adapters — advanced modules (see docs)

Flags of interest: --device (cuda|cpu|mps), --load-in-8bit, --load-in-4bit, --trust-remote-code, --verbose, --quiet, --log-format (text|json), and --dry-run.

Beginner shortcut command (no Makefile needed):

python -m llm_ripper.cli quickstart --open
# or just
llm-ripper quickstart --open

Examples

• End-to-end scripts in examples/
  • run_full_pipeline.py, run_extraction_only.py, run_complete_pipeline.py
• Quick offline smoke test (no downloads):
  • make smoke-offline

Configuration

• Environment variables may be supplied via .env (see .env.example).
• JSON configs for some flows are supported; see tests/test_config_validation.py and src/llm_ripper/utils/config.py.
• Standardized run layout under runs/<timestamp>/ with directories:
  • knowledge_bank, activations, analysis, transplants, validation, causal, traces, counterfactuals, uq, catalog, provenance, reports.

Studio

Studio interface screenshot will be added soon.

Architecture

See the docs page Architecture. High-level view:

flowchart LR
  A[Donor] --> B[Extract]
  B --> C[Knowledge Bank]
  C --> D[Transplant]
  D --> E[Validate]
  C --> G[Analyze]
  E --> H[Studio]

Maintainers

See the Maintainers guide for enabling Pages, Codecov and PyPI: docs/maintainers.md

Development

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

• Install dev deps: pip install -r requirements-dev.txt && pip install -e .
• Set up pre-commit: pre-commit install
• Quality: make lint, make test, make test-cov
• Matrix locally: tox
• Docs: mkdocs serve

Troubleshooting

See TROUBLESHOOTING.md.

Security

Use --trust-remote-code only when you understand the risk. See SECURITY.md for guidance.

License

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE.