diff --git a/run.c b/run.c
index 1242596..b7b6183 100644
--- a/run.c
+++ b/run.c
@@ -164,7 +164,7 @@ void read_checkpoint(char* checkpoint, Config* config, TransformerWeights* weigh
     memory_map_weights(weights, config, weights_ptr, shared_weights);
 }
 
-void build_transformer(char* checkpoint_path, Transformer *t) {
+void build_transformer(Transformer *t, char* checkpoint_path) {
     // read in the Config and the Weights from the checkpoint
     read_checkpoint(checkpoint_path, &t->config, &t->weights, &t->fd, &t->data, &t->file_size);
     // allocate the RunState buffers
@@ -377,7 +377,7 @@ typedef struct {
     char byte_piece[2];
 } Tokenizer;
 
-void build_tokenizer(char* tokenizer_path, Tokenizer* t, int vocab_size) {
+void build_tokenizer(Tokenizer* t, char* tokenizer_path, int vocab_size) {
     // i should have written the vocab_size into the tokenizer file... sigh
     t->vocab_size = vocab_size;
     // malloc space to hold the scores and the strings
@@ -542,15 +542,21 @@ void encode(Tokenizer* t, char *text, int *tokens, int *n_tokens) {
 }
 
 // ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-// utilities: time / rng
+// The Sampler, which takes logits and returns a sampled token
+// sampling can be done in a few ways: greedy argmax, sampling, top-p sampling
 
-long time_in_ms() {
-    // return time in milliseconds, for benchmarking the model speed
-    struct timespec time;
-    clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, &time);
-    return time.tv_sec * 1000 + time.tv_nsec / 1000000;
-}
+typedef struct {
+    float prob;
+    int index;
+} ProbIndex; // struct used when sorting probabilities during top-p sampling
 
+typedef struct {
+    int vocab_size;
+    ProbIndex* probindex; // buffer used in top-p sampling
+} Sampler;
+
+// rng should technically be a state variable of the Sampler
+// leaving it global here for now for convenience, maybe move later
 unsigned long long rng_seed;
 unsigned int random_u32() {
     // xorshift rng: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xorshift#xorshift.2A
@@ -563,15 +569,7 @@ float random_f32() { // random float32 in [0,1)
     return (random_u32() >> 8) / 16777216.0f;
 }
 
-// ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-// sampling can be done in a few ways: greedy argmax, sampling, top-p sampling
-
-typedef struct {
-    float prob;
-    int index;
-} ProbIndex; // struct used when sorting probabilities during top-p sampling
-
-int argmax(float* probabilities, int n) {
+int sample_argmax(float* probabilities, int n) {
     // return the index that has the highest probability
     int max_i = 0;
     float max_p = probabilities[0];
@@ -584,7 +582,7 @@ int argmax(float* probabilities, int n) {
     return max_i;
 }
 
-int sample(float* probabilities, int n) {
+int sample_mult(float* probabilities, int n) {
     // sample index from probabilities (they must sum to 1!)
     float r = random_f32();
     float cdf = 0.0f;
@@ -647,6 +645,48 @@ int sample_topp(float* probabilities, int n, float topp, ProbIndex* probindex) {
     return probindex[last_idx].index; // in case of rounding errors
 }
 
+void build_sampler(Sampler* sampler, int vocab_size) {
+    sampler->vocab_size = vocab_size;
+    // probindex might not be needed, but it's a ~small buffer so we'll just malloc it
+    sampler->probindex = malloc(vocab_size * sizeof(ProbIndex));
+}
+
+void free_sampler(Sampler* sampler) {
+    free(sampler->probindex);
+}
+
+int sample(Sampler* sampler, float* logits, float temperature, float topp) {
+    // sample the token given the logits and some hyperparameters
+    int next;
+    if (temperature == 0.0f) {
+        // greedy argmax sampling: take the token with the highest probability
+        next = sample_argmax(logits, sampler->vocab_size);
+    } else {
+        // apply the temperature to the logits
+        for (int q=0; q<sampler->vocab_size; q++) { logits[q] /= temperature; }
+        // apply softmax to the logits to get the probabilities for next token
+        softmax(logits, sampler->vocab_size);
+        // we sample from this distribution to get the next token
+        if (topp <= 0 || topp >= 1) {
+            // simply sample from the predicted probability distribution
+            next = sample_mult(logits, sampler->vocab_size);
+        } else {
+            // top-p (nucleus) sampling, clamping the least likely tokens to zero
+            next = sample_topp(logits, sampler->vocab_size, topp, sampler->probindex);
+        }
+    }
+    return next;
+}
+
+// ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
+// utilities: time
+
+long time_in_ms() {
+    // return time in milliseconds, for benchmarking the model speed
+    struct timespec time;
+    clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, &time);
+    return time.tv_sec * 1000 + time.tv_nsec / 1000000;
+}
 
 // ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 // int main
@@ -695,16 +735,18 @@ int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
 
     // build the Transformer via the model .bin file
     Transformer transformer;
-    build_transformer(checkpoint_path, &transformer);
+    build_transformer(&transformer, checkpoint_path);
     int vocab_size = transformer.config.vocab_size; // convenience copy
 
     // build the Tokenizer via the tokenizer .bin file
     Tokenizer tokenizer;
-    build_tokenizer(tokenizer_path, &tokenizer, vocab_size);
+    build_tokenizer(&tokenizer, tokenizer_path, vocab_size);
 
-    // create and init the application RunState
-    ProbIndex *probindex = malloc(vocab_size * sizeof(ProbIndex)); // buffer used in top-p sampling
-    // process the prompt, if any
+    // build the Sampler
+    Sampler sampler;
+    build_sampler(&sampler, vocab_size);
+
+    // encode the (string) prompt into tokens sequence, if any is given
     int *prompt_tokens = NULL;
     int num_prompt_tokens = 0;
     if (prompt != NULL) {
@@ -723,28 +765,12 @@ int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
         float* logits = forward(&transformer, token, pos);
 
         // advance the state state machine
-        if(pos < num_prompt_tokens) {
+        if (pos < num_prompt_tokens) {
             // if we are still processing the input prompt, force the next prompt token
             next = prompt_tokens[pos];
         } else {
-            // sample the next token
-            if (temperature == 0.0f) {
-                // greedy argmax sampling: take the token with the highest probability
-                next = argmax(logits, vocab_size);
-            } else {
-                // apply the temperature to the logits
-                for (int q=0; q<vocab_size; q++) { logits[q] /= temperature; }
-                // apply softmax to the logits to get the probabilities for next token
-                softmax(logits, vocab_size);
-                // we sample from this distribution to get the next token
-                if (topp <= 0 || topp >= 1) {
-                    // simply sample from the predicted probability distribution
-                    next = sample(logits, vocab_size);
-                } else {
-                    // top-p (nucleus) sampling, clamping the least likely tokens to zero
-                    next = sample_topp(logits, vocab_size, topp, probindex);
-                }
-            }
+            // otherwise sample the next token from the logits
+            next = sample(&sampler, logits, temperature, topp);
         }
         pos++;
 
@@ -769,8 +795,8 @@ int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
     }
 
     // memory and file handles cleanup
-    free(probindex);
     if (prompt_tokens != NULL) { free(prompt_tokens); }
+    free_sampler(&sampler);
     free_tokenizer(&tokenizer);
     free_transformer(&transformer);
     return 0;