diff --git a/examples/gptneox-wip/cmpnct_gpt2bpe.hpp b/examples/gptneox-wip/cmpnct_gpt2bpe.hpp
index 64648b646..81ea443b2 100644
--- a/examples/gptneox-wip/cmpnct_gpt2bpe.hpp
+++ b/examples/gptneox-wip/cmpnct_gpt2bpe.hpp
@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@
 //-----
 // Unicode GPT2 Byte Pair Encoding Tokenizer
 // Adapted from https://github.com/cmp-nct/ggllm.cpp
+// Removed loading of merges from HF json and parts made for a specific vocab
 //-----
 
 // Unicode library (from cmpnct_unicode.cpp)
@@ -439,11 +440,10 @@ private:
 struct gpt2bpe_vocab {
     using id = int32_t;
     using token = std::string;
-    std::map<std::string, uint32_t> max_token_length; // max length, for each 2byte prefix
 
+    std::map<std::string, uint32_t> max_token_length; // max length, for each 2byte prefix
     std::map<std::pair<std::string,std::string>, int> bpe_ranks;
     std::vector<std::pair<std::string, std::string>> bpe_merges;
-    std::map<std::string, int> special_tokens;
 
     id special_bos_id = -1;
     id special_eos_id = -1;
@@ -476,22 +476,6 @@ struct gpt2bpe_vocab {
             bpe_ranks.emplace(bpe_merges_[i], i);
         }
         bpe_merges = bpe_merges_;
-
-        // populate special tokens too (0-11 and if available 65024++)
-
-        #if 0
-        for (int i = 0; i < 12; i++) {
-            special_tokens[id_to_token[i].tok] = i;
-        }
-        for (int i = 65024; i < (int)id_to_token.size(); i++) {
-            special_tokens[id_to_token[i].tok] = i;
-        }
-        #endif
-
-        // token_to_id["</s>"] = 11; // bugfix for TII instruct training (blocks stopwords)
-        // special_tokens["</s>"] = 11; // bugfix for TII instruct training (blocks stopwords)
-
-
         return bpe_merges_.size();
     }
 
@@ -508,10 +492,6 @@ struct gpt2bpe_vocab {
         }).base(), str.end());
     }
 
-    // removed, merges loaded from gguf model file:
-    // requires the standard HF type tokenizer.json (pretty printed)
-    // std::vector<std::pair<std::string, std::string>> parse_json_to_bpe_merges(const std::string& filename) {
-
     // get max token length available for a prefix of 2 bytes (string at least 2 bytes long)
     int get_max_token_length(const std::string& string) const {
         if (string.size() < 2)
@@ -609,45 +589,27 @@ struct gpt2bpe_tokenizer {
         {
             work_queue_ = ggllm_bpe_bigram::queue();
             symbols_.clear();
-            bool is_special = false;
-            for (auto it = vocab_.special_tokens.begin(); it != vocab_.special_tokens.end(); ++it)
-            {
-                std::string special_token = it->first;
-                if (word.compare(special_token) == 0)
-                {
-                    ggllm_bpe_symbol sym;
-                    sym.text = word.c_str();
-                    sym.n = word.size();
-                    sym.prev = -1;
-                    sym.next = -1;
-                    symbols_.emplace_back(sym);
-                    is_special = true;
-                    break;
-                }
-            }
 
             int index = 0;
             size_t offset = 0;
-            if (!is_special)
-            {
 
-                while (offset < word.size())
-                {
-                    ggllm_bpe_symbol sym;
-                    size_t char_len = std::min(word.size() - offset, (size_t) CNCTUnicode::utf8_len(word[offset]));
-                    sym.text = word.c_str() + offset;
-                    sym.n = 1;
-                    sym.n = char_len;
-                    offset += sym.n;
-                    sym.prev = index - 1;
-                    sym.next = offset == word.size() ? -1 : index + 1;
-                    index++;
-                    symbols_.emplace_back(sym);
-                }
-                for (size_t i = 1; i < symbols_.size(); ++i) {
-                    add_new_bigram(i - 1, i);
-                }
+            while (offset < word.size())
+            {
+                ggllm_bpe_symbol sym;
+                size_t char_len = std::min(word.size() - offset, (size_t) CNCTUnicode::utf8_len(word[offset]));
+                sym.text = word.c_str() + offset;
+                sym.n = 1;
+                sym.n = char_len;
+                offset += sym.n;
+                sym.prev = index - 1;
+                sym.next = offset == word.size() ? -1 : index + 1;
+                index++;
+                symbols_.emplace_back(sym);
             }
+            for (size_t i = 1; i < symbols_.size(); ++i) {
+                add_new_bigram(i - 1, i);
+            }
+
             // build token(s)
             while (!work_queue_.empty())
             {
@@ -790,17 +752,6 @@ private:
         bpe_encoded_words.reserve(text.size());
 
         text_utf = CNCTUnicode::split_utf8_enhanced(text);
-        std::map<std::string, int> special_tokens = vocab_.special_tokens;
-        int smallest_len_special_tokens = 0;
-        if (special_tokens.size())
-        {
-            smallest_len_special_tokens = special_tokens.begin()->first.size();
-            for (auto it = special_tokens.begin(); it != special_tokens.end(); ++it)
-            {
-                if (it->first.size() < (size_t)smallest_len_special_tokens)
-                    smallest_len_special_tokens = it->first.size();
-            }
-        }
 
         for (int i = 0; i < (int)text_utf.size(); i++)
         {
@@ -813,41 +764,6 @@ private:
             const CNCTString &utf_char_next_next = (i+2 < (int)text_utf.size()) ? text_utf[i+2] : CNCTString();
             // const CNCTString &utf_char_prev = (i > 0) ? text_utf[i-1] : CNCTString();
 
-        // handling special tokens
-            bool special_token_found = false;
-            if (bytes_remain >= (int)smallest_len_special_tokens)
-            for (auto it = special_tokens.begin(); it != special_tokens.end(); ++it)
-            {
-                if ((bytes_remain) < (int)it->first.size())
-                    continue;
-
-                if (str_is_equal(text_pos, it->first.c_str(), it->first.size()))
-                {
-                    if (token.size())
-                    {
-                        bpe_words.emplace_back(token); // push previous content as token
-                        token.clear();
-                        collecting = false;
-                        collecting_letter = false;
-                        collecting_numeric = false;
-                        collecting_special = false;
-                        collecting_whitespace_lookahead = false;
-                    }
-
-                    bpe_words.emplace_back(it->first); // push special token as token
-
-                    // we now advance i until the token is fulfilled by the utf_chars
-                    int st_bytes = (int)it->first.size();
-                    for (;st_bytes;st_bytes -= text_utf[i++].str.size());
-                    i--;
-                    special_token_found = true;
-                    break;
-                }
-            }
-
-            if (special_token_found)   continue;
-
-
             // handling contractions
             if (!split_condition && bytes_remain >= 2)
             {