diff --git a/run.c b/run.c
index da1fbc4..6f281f8 100644
--- a/run.c
+++ b/run.c
@@ -732,6 +732,8 @@ long time_in_ms() {
 // generation loop
 
 void generate(Transformer *transformer, Tokenizer *tokenizer, Sampler *sampler, char *prompt, int steps) {
+    char *empty_prompt = "";
+    if (prompt == NULL) { prompt = empty_prompt; }
 
     // encode the (string) prompt into tokens sequence
     int num_prompt_tokens = 0;
@@ -785,6 +787,98 @@ void generate(Transformer *transformer, Tokenizer *tokenizer, Sampler *sampler,
     free(prompt_tokens);
 }
 
+void read_stdin(const char* guide, char* buffer, size_t bufsize) {
+    // read a line from stdin, up to but not including \n
+    printf("%s", guide);
+    if (fgets(buffer, bufsize, stdin) != NULL) {
+        size_t len = strlen(buffer);
+        if (len > 0 && buffer[len - 1] == '\n') {
+            buffer[len - 1] = '\0'; // strip newline
+        }
+    }
+}
+
+void chat(Transformer *transformer, Tokenizer *tokenizer, Sampler *sampler,
+          char *cli_user_prompt, char *cli_system_prompt, int steps) {
+
+    // buffers for reading the system prompt and user prompt from stdin
+    char system_prompt[512];
+    char user_prompt[512];
+    char rendered_prompt[512];
+    int num_prompt_tokens = 0;
+    int* prompt_tokens = (int*)malloc(512 * sizeof(int));
+    int user_idx;
+
+    // start the main loop
+    int8_t user_turn = 1; // user starts
+    int next;        // will store the next token in the sequence
+    int token;       // stores the current token to feed into the transformer
+    int prev_token;
+    int pos = 0;     // position in the sequence
+    while (pos < steps) {
+
+        // when it is the user's turn to contribute tokens to the dialog...
+        if (user_turn) {
+            // get the (optional) system prompt at position 0
+            if (pos == 0) {
+                // at position 0, the user can also contribute a system prompt
+                if (cli_system_prompt == NULL) {
+                    // system prompt was not passed in, attempt to get it from stdin
+                    read_stdin("Enter system prompt (optional): ", system_prompt, sizeof(system_prompt));
+                } else {
+                    // system prompt was passed in, use it
+                    strcpy(system_prompt, cli_system_prompt);
+                }
+            }
+            // get the user prompt
+            if (pos == 0 && cli_user_prompt != NULL) {
+                // user prompt for position 0 was passed in, use it
+                strcpy(user_prompt, cli_user_prompt);
+            } else {
+                // otherwise get user prompt from stdin
+                read_stdin("Enter user prompt: ", user_prompt, sizeof(user_prompt));
+            }
+            // render user/system prompts into the Llama 2 Chat schema
+            if (pos == 0 && system_prompt[0] != '\0') {
+                char system_template[] = "[INST] <<SYS>>\n%s\n<</SYS>>\n\n%s\n[/INST]";
+                sprintf(rendered_prompt, system_template, system_prompt, user_prompt);
+            } else {
+                char user_template[] = "[INST] %s [/INST]";
+                sprintf(rendered_prompt, user_template, user_prompt);
+            }
+            // encode the rendered prompt into tokens
+            encode(tokenizer, rendered_prompt, 1, 0, prompt_tokens, &num_prompt_tokens);
+            user_idx = 0; // reset the user index
+            user_turn = 0;
+        }
+
+        // determine the token to pass into the transformer next
+        prev_token = token;
+        if (user_idx < num_prompt_tokens) {
+            // if we are still processing the input prompt, force the next prompt token
+            token = prompt_tokens[user_idx++];
+        } else {
+            // otherwise use the next token sampled from previous turn
+            token = next;
+        }
+        // EOS (=2) token ends the Assistant turn
+        if (token == 2) { user_turn = 1; }
+
+        // forward the transformer to get logits for the next token
+        float* logits = forward(transformer, token, pos);
+        next = sample(sampler, logits);
+        pos++;
+
+        // print the token as string, decode it with the Tokenizer object
+        char* piece = decode(tokenizer, prev_token, token);
+        safe_printf(piece); // same as printf("%s", piece), but skips "unsafe" bytes
+        fflush(stdout);
+    }
+    printf("\n");
+    free(prompt_tokens);
+}
+
+
 // ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 // CLI, include only if not testing
 #ifndef TESTING
@@ -799,6 +893,8 @@ void error_usage() {
     fprintf(stderr, "  -n <int>    number of steps to run for, default 256. 0 = max_seq_len\n");
     fprintf(stderr, "  -i <string> input prompt\n");
     fprintf(stderr, "  -z <string> optional path to custom tokenizer\n");
+    fprintf(stderr, "  -m <string> mode: generate|chat, default: generate\n");
+    fprintf(stderr, "  -y <string> (optional) system prompt in chat mode\n");
     exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
 }
 
@@ -807,11 +903,13 @@ int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
     // default parameters
     char *checkpoint_path = NULL;  // e.g. out/model.bin
     char *tokenizer_path = "tokenizer.bin";
-    float temperature = 1.0f; // 0.0 = greedy deterministic. 1.0 = original. don't set higher
-    float topp = 0.9f;        // top-p in nucleus sampling. 1.0 = off. 0.9 works well, but slower
-    int steps = 256;          // number of steps to run for
-    char *prompt = "";        // prompt string
+    float temperature = 1.0f;   // 0.0 = greedy deterministic. 1.0 = original. don't set higher
+    float topp = 0.9f;          // top-p in nucleus sampling. 1.0 = off. 0.9 works well, but slower
+    int steps = 256;            // number of steps to run for
+    char *prompt = NULL;        // prompt string
     unsigned long long rng_seed = 0; // seed rng with time by default
+    char *mode = "generate";    // generate|chat
+    char *system_prompt = NULL; // the (optional) system prompt to use in chat mode
 
     // poor man's C argparse so we can override the defaults above from the command line
     if (argc >= 2) { checkpoint_path = argv[1]; } else { error_usage(); }
@@ -827,6 +925,8 @@ int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
         else if (argv[i][1] == 'n') { steps = atoi(argv[i + 1]); }
         else if (argv[i][1] == 'i') { prompt = argv[i + 1]; }
         else if (argv[i][1] == 'z') { tokenizer_path = argv[i + 1]; }
+        else if (argv[i][1] == 'm') { mode = argv[i + 1]; }
+        else if (argv[i][1] == 'y') { system_prompt = argv[i + 1]; }
         else { error_usage(); }
     }
 
@@ -850,7 +950,14 @@ int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
     build_sampler(&sampler, transformer.config.vocab_size, temperature, topp, rng_seed);
 
     // run!
-    generate(&transformer, &tokenizer, &sampler, prompt, steps);
+    if (strcmp(mode, "generate") == 0) {
+        generate(&transformer, &tokenizer, &sampler, prompt, steps);
+    } else if (strcmp(mode, "chat") == 0) {
+        chat(&transformer, &tokenizer, &sampler, prompt, system_prompt, steps);
+    } else {
+        fprintf(stderr, "unknown mode: %s\n", mode);
+        error_usage();
+    }
 
     // memory and file handles cleanup
     free_sampler(&sampler);