neural-net-from-scratch 0.1.1

A tiny neural network library built from scratch in NumPy — for learning how autograd, backprop, and optimizers actually work.

neural-net-from-scratch

A tiny neural network library built from scratch in NumPy.

Why does this exist?

I wanted to know how autograd actually works, not just "PyTorch handles it" but how: how the computation graph gets built, how gradients flow backwards, what an optimizer actually does when you call .step(). Best way to learn was to build it myself!

Everything here is pure NumPy. No PyTorch, no JAX, no C extensions. If you want a fast production framework, use PyTorch. If you want to read a few hundred lines of Python that spells out what those frameworks do under the hood, this might be useful.

Installation

Requires Python 3.14+.

Library use (in a project)

uv add neural-net-from-scratch

Or with the demo example included:

uv add "neural-net-from-scratch[examples]"

Try the demo (no project needed)

uvx --from "neural-net-from-scratch[examples]" nn-regression-1d

uvx grabs the package into an ephemeral environment, runs the demo, and cleans up after itself.

Quickstart

Fit a small MLP to y = x² + 1:

import numpy as np

from neural_net.activation import ReLU
from neural_net.layer import Linear
from neural_net.loss_function import Mse
from neural_net.model import Model
from neural_net.node import Node


class MyModel(Model):
    def __init__(self):
        self.linear1 = Linear(1, 16, seed=42)
        self.relu = ReLU()
        self.linear2 = Linear(16, 1, seed=43)

    def forward(self, x: Node) -> Node:
        return self.linear2(self.relu(self.linear1(x)))


rng = np.random.default_rng(7)
X_train = rng.uniform(0, 1, size=(500, 1))
y_true = X_train**2 + 1 + rng.normal(scale=0.03, size=X_train.shape)

model = MyModel()
model.train(
    x_train=X_train,
    y_true=y_true,
    loss=Mse(),
    optimizer_key="sgd",
    num_epochs=2000,
    batch_size=40,
    learning_rate=0.04,
    shuffle=True,
)

X_test = np.linspace(0, 1, 100).reshape(-1, 1)
y_pred = model.predict(X_test)[0]

That's the whole thing. Subclass Model, define your layers in __init__, wire them together in forward, call .train(...).

Examples

Once you install with the examples extra, you get a CLI demo:

uv run nn-regression-1d

That runs a 1D regression sweep across a few hidden layer sizes (4, 8, 32, 256) and plots them side by side so you can see how capacity affects the fit. Source lives at src/neural_net/examples/regression_1d.py if you want to poke at it.

Core concepts

A quick tour of the building blocks:

• Node — a NumPy array with autograd metadata attached (who created it, what its parents are, its accumulated gradient, whether it needs one). The autograd graph is a graph of Nodes.
• Layer — a stateless-ish transformation with a forward() and a backward(). Calling one builds a new Node and hooks it into the graph. Linear and Add live here.
• Activation — same as Layer, just semantically for non-parametric nonlinearities. ReLU lives here.
• LossFunction — takes (y_pred, y_true), returns a scalar Node you can call .backward() on. Mse is included.
• Optimizer — walks the model's parameters and applies updates. Sgd is included; new optimizers auto-register themselves via __init_subclass__.
• Model — subclass this, drop your layers into __init__, wire them in forward(). Get parameters(), predict(), and a full train() loop for free.

The flow when you train:

1. Forward pass through your Model builds a computation graph of Nodes.
2. The loss node sits at the root of that graph.
3. .backward() on the root does a topological sort and walks backwards, accumulating gradients on every Node with requires_grad=True.
4. The optimizer applies those gradients to your parameters.
5. Repeat.

That's it! No magic layers, no framework internals hiding anything. Read the source in src/neural_net/ and you can trace every step.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.