# Tinker Cookbook

The **Tinker Cookbook** is the ecosystem around the [Tinker SDK](https://tinker-docs.thinkingmachines.ai/tinker/index.md). While the SDK provides the core client-server API for training and sampling, the cookbook gives you everything else:

- **Training abstractions** — `Env`, `EnvGroupBuilder`, `RLDataset`, `train.Config` — so you can focus on your task, not plumbing
- **Renderers** — Convert chat messages to tokens for every supported model family
- **Production recipes** — 15+ end-to-end training examples (SFT, RL, DPO, distillation, tool use, multi-agent, and more)
- **Weight management** — Download, merge, export, and publish trained models to HuggingFace
- **[Evaluation](https://tinker-docs.thinkingmachines.ai/cookbook/eval/index.md)** — 20+ standardized benchmarks (GSM8K, MMLU, MATH, IFEval, SWE-Bench, …) with concurrency, trajectory storage, and training-loop integration
- **[Using Inkling](https://tinker-docs.thinkingmachines.ai/cookbook/inkling/index.md)** — Render chat, tool calls, images, and audio with `tml-renderers`

## When to use the Cookbook vs. the SDK

|              | Tinker SDK                                                | Tinker Cookbook                      |
| ------------ | --------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------ |
| **What**     | Core API client                                           | Training ecosystem                   |
| **Use when** | You want full control over every API call                 | You want batteries-included training |
| **Examples** | `training_client.forward_backward(data, "cross_entropy")` | `asyncio.run(train.main(config))`    |
| **Install**  | `uv pip install tinker`                                   | `uv pip install tinker-cookbook`     |

Most users will use both — the SDK for understanding what's happening, and the cookbook for building production training pipelines.

## Getting Started

1. [Install the cookbook](https://tinker-docs.thinkingmachines.ai/cookbook/quickstart/index.md)
1. Follow the [Tutorials](https://tinker-docs.thinkingmachines.ai/tutorials/index.md) — they cover both SDK and cookbook
1. Browse the [Recipes](https://tinker-docs.thinkingmachines.ai/cookbook/recipes/index.md) for production examples
1. Check the [API Reference](https://tinker-docs.thinkingmachines.ai/cookbook/api-reference/index.md) when you need details