diff --git a/src/crucible.zig b/src/crucible.zig
index 6b326e5..a4d8736 100644
--- a/src/crucible.zig
+++ b/src/crucible.zig
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@ pub const tensor = @import("tensor.zig");
 pub const pickle = @import("pickle.zig");
 pub const pt = @import("pt.zig");
 pub const layers = @import("layers.zig");
+pub const transformer = @import("transformer.zig");
 
 pub const Tensor = tensor.Tensor;
 pub const DType = tensor.DType;
diff --git a/src/transformer.zig b/src/transformer.zig
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b2a35dc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/transformer.zig
@@ -0,0 +1,271 @@
+//! Transformer layer primitives — the missing set for smol transformer +
+//! graph-augmented inference. Built on the same f32x8 FMA philosophy as the
+//! conv/linear primitives.
+
+const std = @import("std");
+const V = @Vector(8, f32);
+const softmax = @import("layers.zig").softmax;
+
+// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+// Normalization
+// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+/// LayerNorm: (x - mean) / sqrt(var + eps) * weight + bias over the last dim.
+/// weight/bias may be null (no affine).
+pub fn layerNorm(input: []const f32, weight: ?[]const f32, bias: ?[]const f32, eps: f32, output: []f32) void {
+    const n: f32 = @floatFromInt(input.len);
+    var mean: f32 = 0;
+    for (input) |v| mean += v;
+    mean /= n;
+
+    var variance: f32 = 0;
+    for (input) |v| {
+        const d = v - mean;
+        variance += d * d;
+    }
+    variance /= n;
+
+    const inv_std = 1.0 / @sqrt(variance + eps);
+    for (input, 0..) |v, i| {
+        const normalized = (v - mean) * inv_std;
+        output[i] = if (weight) |w| normalized * w[i] + bias.?[i] else normalized;
+    }
+}
+
+/// RMSNorm: x / sqrt(mean(x^2) + eps) * weight. Used in LLaMA/Mistral-family.
+pub fn rmsNorm(input: []const f32, weight: []const f32, eps: f32, output: []f32) void {
+    var sum_squares: f32 = 0;
+    for (input) |v| sum_squares += v * v;
+    const inv_rms = 1.0 / @sqrt(sum_squares / @as(f32, @floatFromInt(input.len)) + eps);
+    for (input, 0..) |v, i| {
+        output[i] = v * inv_rms * weight[i];
+    }
+}
+
+// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+// Activations (transformer-relevant)
+// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+/// GELU (tanh approximation, matching PyTorch's default).
+pub fn gelu(input: []const f32, output: []f32) void {
+    for (input, 0..) |x, i| {
+        // tanh approximation: 0.5 * x * (1 + tanh(sqrt(2/pi) * (x + 0.044715 * x^3)))
+        const inner = 0.7978845608028654 * (x + 0.044715 * x * x * x);
+        output[i] = 0.5 * x * (1.0 + std.math.tanh(inner));
+    }
+}
+
+/// SiLU (Swish): x * sigmoid(x). Used in LLaMA/Mistral-family.
+pub fn silu(input: []const f32, output: []f32) void {
+    for (input, 0..) |x, i| {
+        output[i] = x / (1.0 + @exp(-x));
+    }
+}
+
+// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+// Embedding
+// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+/// Embedding lookup: weight is (vocab_size, embed_dim), returns the row.
+pub fn embedding(weight: []const f32, embed_dim: usize, token_ids: []const usize, output: []f32) void {
+    for (token_ids, 0..) |tid, i| {
+        const src = weight[tid * embed_dim ..][0..embed_dim];
+        @memcpy(output[i * embed_dim ..][0..embed_dim], src);
+    }
+}
+
+// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+// Matmul (GEMM)
+// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+/// 2D matrix multiply: A (M, K) x B (K, N) -> C (M, N). f32x8 FMA over K.
+pub fn matmul(a: []const f32, b: []const f32, c: []f32, m: usize, k: usize, n: usize) void {
+    @memset(c, 0);
+    for (0..m) |i| {
+        const a_row = a[i * k ..][0..k];
+        const c_row = c[i * n ..][0..n];
+        for (0..k) |kk| {
+            const av: V = @splat(a_row[kk]);
+            const b_row = b[kk * n ..][0..n];
+            var x: usize = 0;
+            while (x + 8 <= n) : (x += 8) {
+                const bv: V = b_row[x..][0..8].*;
+                const cv: V = c_row[x..][0..8].*;
+                c_row[x..][0..8].* = @mulAdd(V, av, bv, cv);
+            }
+            while (x < n) : (x += 1) {
+                c_row[x] += a_row[kk] * b_row[x];
+            }
+        }
+    }
+}
+
+// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+// Attention
+// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+/// Scaled dot-product attention for a single head:
+///   scores = softmax(Q @ K^T / sqrt(d_k)) @ V
+/// q: (seq_q, d_k), k: (seq_k, d_k), v: (seq_k, d_v)
+/// output: (seq_q, d_v)
+/// Optional mask: (seq_q, seq_k), added to scores before softmax.
+pub fn attention(
+    alloc: std.mem.Allocator,
+    q: []const f32,
+    k: []const f32,
+    v: []const f32,
+    seq_q: usize,
+    seq_k: usize,
+    d_k: usize,
+    d_v: usize,
+    mask: ?[]const f32,
+    output: []f32,
+) !void {
+    // scores = Q @ K^T / sqrt(d_k)  →  (seq_q, seq_k)
+    const scores = try alloc.alloc(f32, seq_q * seq_k);
+    defer alloc.free(scores);
+    const scale = 1.0 / @sqrt(@as(f32, @floatFromInt(d_k)));
+
+    // Q @ K^T
+    matmul(q, k, scores, seq_q, d_k, seq_k);
+    for (scores) |*s| s.* *= scale;
+
+    // apply mask (additive)
+    if (mask) |m| {
+        for (scores, 0..) |*s, i| s.* += m[i];
+    }
+
+    // row-wise softmax
+    for (0..seq_q) |i| {
+        softmax(scores[i * seq_k ..][0..seq_k]);
+    }
+
+    // output = softmax(Q @ K^T / sqrt(d_k)) @ V  →  (seq_q, d_v)
+    matmul(scores, v, output, seq_q, seq_k, d_v);
+}
+
+/// Multi-head attention: splits q/k/v into `n_heads` heads along the embed
+/// dimension, runs attention per head, concatenates outputs.
+/// q: (seq_q, embed), k: (seq_k, embed), v: (seq_k, embed)
+/// output: (seq_q, embed)
+pub fn multiHeadAttention(
+    alloc: std.mem.Allocator,
+    q: []const f32,
+    k: []const f32,
+    v: []const f32,
+    seq_q: usize,
+    seq_k: usize,
+    embed: usize,
+    n_heads: usize,
+    mask: ?[]const f32, // optional additive mask (e.g. padding) applied after causal
+    output: []f32,
+) !void {
+    const head_dim = embed / n_heads;
+    var concat = try alloc.alloc(f32, seq_q * embed);
+    defer alloc.free(concat);
+
+    for (0..n_heads) |h| {
+        const q_off = h * head_dim;
+        const k_off = h * head_dim;
+        const v_off = h * head_dim;
+
+        // extract per-head slices (stride = embed)
+        const q_head = try alloc.alloc(f32, seq_q * head_dim);
+        defer alloc.free(q_head);
+        const k_head = try alloc.alloc(f32, seq_k * head_dim);
+        defer alloc.free(k_head);
+        const v_head = try alloc.alloc(f32, seq_k * head_dim);
+        defer alloc.free(v_head);
+
+        for (0..seq_q) |i| {
+            for (0..head_dim) |d| {
+                q_head[i * head_dim + d] = q[i * embed + q_off + d];
+            }
+        }
+        for (0..seq_k) |i| {
+            for (0..head_dim) |d| {
+                k_head[i * head_dim + d] = k[i * embed + k_off + d];
+            }
+            for (0..head_dim) |d| {
+                v_head[i * head_dim + d] = v[i * embed + v_off + d];
+            }
+        }
+
+        // attention per head
+        const head_out = try alloc.alloc(f32, seq_q * head_dim);
+        defer alloc.free(head_out);
+
+        // scores
+        const scores = try alloc.alloc(f32, seq_q * seq_k);
+        defer alloc.free(scores);
+        const scale = 1.0 / @sqrt(@as(f32, @floatFromInt(head_dim)));
+        matmul(q_head, k_head, scores, seq_q, head_dim, seq_k);
+        for (scores) |*s| s.* *= scale;
+
+        // causal mask (lower triangular)
+        for (0..seq_q) |i| {
+            for (0..seq_k) |j| {
+                if (j > i) scores[i * seq_k + j] = -std.math.floatMax(f32) / 2.0;
+            }
+        }
+        // apply external mask if provided
+        if (mask) |m| {
+            for (scores, 0..) |*s, i| s.* += m[i];
+        }
+
+        // row-wise softmax
+        for (0..seq_q) |i| {
+            softmax(scores[i * seq_k ..][0..seq_k]);
+        }
+
+        // output = scores @ v_head
+        matmul(scores, v_head, head_out, seq_q, seq_k, head_dim);
+
+        // scatter into concat
+        for (0..seq_q) |i| {
+            for (0..head_dim) |d| {
+                concat[i * embed + q_off + d] = head_out[i * head_dim + d];
+            }
+        }
+    }
+
+    @memcpy(output[0..seq_q * embed], concat);
+}
+
+// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+// RoPE (Rotary Position Embeddings)
+// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+/// Apply RoPE in place on a (seq_len, embed_dim) tensor.
+/// Requires embed_dim to be even. cos/sin are precomputed or computed inline.
+pub fn rope(input: []f32, seq_len: usize, embed_dim: usize, base: f32) void {
+    const half = embed_dim / 2;
+    for (0..seq_len) |pos| {
+        for (0..half) |d| {
+            const freq = @exp(-@log(base) * @as(f32, @floatFromInt(2 * d)) / @as(f32, @floatFromInt(embed_dim)));
+            const angle = @as(f32, @floatFromInt(pos)) * freq;
+            const cos_a = @cos(angle);
+            const sin_a = @sin(angle);
+            const idx = pos * embed_dim;
+            const x0 = input[idx + d];
+            const x1 = input[idx + d + half];
+            input[idx + d] = x0 * cos_a - x1 * sin_a;
+            input[idx + d + half] = x0 * sin_a + x1 * cos_a;
+        }
+    }
+}
+
+// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+// Causal mask generation
+// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+/// Generate a causal mask (lower triangular = 0, upper triangular = -inf).
+pub fn causalMask(alloc: std.mem.Allocator, seq_q: usize, seq_k: usize) ![]f32 {
+    const mask = try alloc.alloc(f32, seq_q * seq_k);
+    for (0..seq_q) |i| {
+        for (0..seq_k) |j| {
+            mask[i * seq_k + j] = if (j > i) -std.math.floatMax(f32) / 2.0 else 0;
+        }
+    }
+    return mask;
+}