[Submitted on 27 Feb 2026 (v1), last revised 21 Oct 2026 (this version, v2)]
Abstract:We present **GLUScope**, an open-source resource for analyzing neurons in Transformer-based language models (LMs), intended for interpretability researchers. We focus on the now-standard *GLU-based activation functions* such as SwiGLU, used in virtually all recent open-weights LMs. This introduces a new challenge: understanding positive activations is not enough. Instead, both the *gate* and the *in* activation of a neuron can be positive or negative, leading to four different possible sign combinations (*activation quadrants*) that in some cases have quite different functionalities (e.g. promoting vs. suppressing a specific set of tokens). Accordingly, for any neuron, our tool shows text examples for each of the four sign combinations, and indicates how often each combination occurs. Our resource can lead to novel insights: in particular, thanks to analyzing all four activation quadrants, it can surface interpretable behavior that other tools would miss. We also release the code used to create the resource, thus enabling researchers to build on it by adding more models, text corpora, or neuron pages.
Submission history
From: Sebastian Gerstner [view email]
[v1] Fri, 27 Feb 2026 09:07:45 UTC (312 KB)
[v2] Wed, 21 Oct 2026 09:18:58 UTC (506 KB)
