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wtf is simple-amt?

karpathy/simple-amt — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-07-18 · repo last pushed 2015-03-03

★ 34PythonAudience · researcherComplexity · 2/5DormantSetup · moderate

TL;DR

A lightweight helper library that removes the complexity of Amazon's Mechanical Turk APIs, letting you launch, collect, and pay for small human tasks like labeling or surveys through simple command-line commands.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((simple-amt))
    What it does
      Wraps Mechanical Turk APIs
      Launches worker tasks
      Collects results
    Tech Stack
      Python
      HTML templates
      JSON config
    Use Cases
      Label training data
      Run surveys
      Collect human feedback
    Audience
      Researchers
      Founders
      QA teams

Code map

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Why would anyone build with this?

REASON 1

Have workers label thousands of images for a machine learning dataset without hand-coding Amazon's API calls.

REASON 2

Run a quick survey or product-recommendation review through paid online workers.

REASON 3

Collect structured human feedback for a research project using a simple HTML task template.

REASON 4

Test whether real users find a product idea or recommendation sensible before building it further.

What's in the stack?

PythonHTMLJSON

How it stacks up

karpathy/simple-amtabhisumatk/epstein_files_ragasdfo123/forgewm
Stars343434
LanguagePythonPythonPython
Last pushed2015-03-03——
MaintenanceDormant——
Setup difficultymoderatemoderatehard
Complexity2/53/55/5
Audienceresearcherresearcherresearcher

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you spin it up?

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 30min

Requires an Amazon Mechanical Turk account and comfort with command-line tools and config files.

Yoink these prompts

Prompt 1
Help me write an HTML template and JSON settings file for a simple-amt task that asks workers to label images.
Prompt 2
Walk me through the simple-amt commands to launch a task on Mechanical Turk and check how many workers have responded.
Prompt 3
Show me how to use simple-amt to retrieve and structure the results after workers finish a task.
Prompt 4
Explain how to set the payment amount and time limit for a task using simple-amt's settings file.
Prompt 5
Help me design a Mechanical Turk survey task with simple-amt to test whether users understand my product's recommendations.

Frequently asked questions

wtf is simple-amt?

A lightweight helper library that removes the complexity of Amazon's Mechanical Turk APIs, letting you launch, collect, and pay for small human tasks like labeling or surveys through simple command-line commands.

What language is simple-amt written in?

Mainly Python. The stack also includes Python, HTML, JSON.

Is simple-amt actively maintained?

Dormant — no commits in 2+ years (last push 2015-03-03).

How hard is simple-amt to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated moderate, with roughly 30min to a first successful run.

Who is simple-amt for?

Mainly researcher.

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