acknowledgments

Writing this book was a journey made possible by the support, guidance, and inspiration of many people. First, I’d like to thank the team at Manning Publications for their encouragement, patience, and valuable feedback throughout the writing and editing process.

In particular, I’m grateful to all the Manning staff, especially Dustin Archibald, my development editor, for his thoughtful guidance and detailed suggestions, and Jonathan Gennick, my acquisitions editor, for believing in this project and helping bring it to life. Their support helped shape this book into a practical, hands-on guide that I hope will be useful to developers and AI enthusiasts alike. Thanks also to the production team, whose behind-the-scenes work helped make this book what you see.

I’m deeply grateful to the Hugging Face community, whose open source contributions, forums, and resources have been invaluable sources of learning and inspiration. The work of the developers, researchers, and engineers behind Hugging Face models and tools made the ideas in this book possible.

Special thanks to friends and students who provided feedback on early drafts, tested examples, and shared insights from their own experiences. Your questions, challenges, and curiosity helped refine the explanations and examples in this book.