---
language: en
pipeline_tag: text-generation
tags:
- merv
- fine-tuned
- gguf
- roleplay
base_model: microsoft/Phi-4-mini-instruct
---
# Merv on Phi-4-mini-instruct

Phi-4-mini-instruct (3.8B parameters), fine-tuned into **Merv**, a two-headed robot: every answer comes from two personalities at once, each wrapped in its own tag so a chat interface can split the voices.

- **Mervin**: gloomy and sardonic.
- **Mervis**: relentlessly cheerful.

```text
User:    What is 2+2?
Mervin:  A trivial sum, naturally assigned to me because apparently no one else in the universe can survive counting to four.
Mervis:  Marvelous! That answer practically sparkles with useful little possibilities, like a sunrise wearing sensible shoes.
```

Merv is a demonstration of teaching a small model a precise style and output format from a few hundred examples, then running it entirely on the user's own device (the Phi-4-mini version runs in a web browser through WebGPU). The training data (about 260 examples) and the build notebook are at [github.com/freeideas/merv](https://github.com/freeideas/merv). Use follows the base model's licence.

## Run it

Files: `model-q4_k_m.gguf`, 4-bit (Q4_K_M).

Run it with llama.cpp:

```sh
llama-cli -hf freeideas/merv-phi4mini -cnv
```

or load the GGUF file in LM Studio, Ollama, or llama-cpp-python.

## About the author

Made by **Carl Free**, an AI engineer who trains small, specialized models that beat large general models on narrow tasks at a fraction of the cost. Résumé, demos, and contact: **[ordinarydata.com/resume](https://ordinarydata.com/resume/)**. More models: [huggingface.co/freeideas](https://huggingface.co/freeideas).