About this guide

Sources, credits & academic integrity

This is an independent, AI-assisted study companion for Stanford CS336 Assignment 1 (Spring 2026). It is not an official Stanford publication and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Stanford University or the course staff.

Use it to learn, then do the work yourself. The lessons show the official unimplemented Python adapter functions, handout-derived starter TODOs, concepts, equations, and progressive hints. The starter TODOs are clearly marked as guide suggestions. They do not include finished assignment code or answers. You must independently write the code, run experiments, analyze results, and prepare your own submission. Follow the current CS336 course policy and the official handout if either differs from this guide.

Primary source

The original Stanford CS336 Assignment 1 GitHub repository is the source of truth. This guide's content map and equation references follow its Spring 2026 v26.0.3 handout at commit a158843. Read the handout PDF for authoritative requirements, deadlines, tests, and submission instructions. This guide may contain mistakes or become outdated.

Credits and licenses

The handout and assignment source are by Stanford University. Their repository includes an MIT license notice, reproduced here. The guide reproduces unimplemented functions from tests/adapters.py at the pinned source commit. Both the local and GitHub Pages editions bundle the PDF for reference.
Mathematics is rendered with KaTeX. Its bundled JavaScript, CSS, and fonts are under the KaTeX MIT license.
The study explanations, diagrams, and interactive widgets were created for this companion. Diagrams in assets/diagrams/ are original SVGs and do not use Stanford logos or course figures.
A few lessons also show third-party diagrams under open licenses, credited beneath each figure and listed in media credits. For example, the masked self-attention diagram is by Daniel Voigt Godoy (dl-visuals, CC BY 4.0).
“See it explained elsewhere” cards only link to outside articles, videos, and papers. No images from those pages are copied.

Visual credits

The cover photograph, Stanfordquad.jpg, is an orthographic panorama of Stanford Main Quad by Michael Connor, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic. The original image is bundled unchanged; the narrow-screen layout crops its display. Its use does not imply endorsement by the photographer or Stanford.

The stage illustrations, lesson diagrams, and interactive widgets are original teaching visuals created for this guide. Token IDs, merge sequences, probability bars, and learning curves are illustrative examples, not assignment outputs or measured results. Images are bundled locally and remain available offline.

Progress and privacy

Lesson position and completion are stored only in this browser’s local storage. The study site has no analytics, account sign-in, or network request for lesson assets. External course links open separately.