Initialize a sweep

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Summary: Initialize a W&B Sweep

Original Documentation

Documentation Index#

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Initialize a W&B Sweep

W&B uses a Sweep Controller to manage sweeps on the cloud (standard), locally (local) across one or more machines. After a run completes, the sweep controller will issue a new set of instructions describing a new run to execute. These instructions are picked up by agents who actually perform the runs. In a typical W&B Sweep, the controller lives on the W&B server. Agents live on your machines.

The following code snippets demonstrate how to initialize sweeps with the CLI and within a Jupyter Notebook or Python script.

  1. Before you initialize a sweep, make sure you have a sweep configuration defined either in a YAML file or a nested Python dictionary object in your script. For more information, see Define sweep configuration.
  2. Both the W&B Sweep and the W&B Run must be in the same project. Therefore, the name you provide when you initialize W&B (wandb.init()) must match the name of the project you provide when you initialize a W&B Sweep (wandb.sweep()).

Use the W&B SDK to initialize a sweep. Pass the sweep configuration dictionary to the sweep parameter. Optionally provide the name of the project for the project parameter (project) where you want the output of the W&B Run to be stored. If the project is not specified, the run is put in an “Uncategorized” project.

    import wandb

    # Example sweep configuration
    sweep_configuration = {
        "method": "random",
        "name": "sweep",
        "metric": {"goal": "maximize", "name": "val_acc"},
        "parameters": {
            "batch_size": {"values": [16, 32, 64]},
            "epochs": {"values": [5, 10, 15]},
            "lr": {"max": 0.1, "min": 0.0001},
        },
    }

    sweep_id = wandb.sweep(sweep=sweep_configuration, project="project-name")
    ```

The [`wandb.sweep()`](/models/ref/python/functions/sweep) function returns the sweep ID. The sweep ID includes the entity name and the project name. Make a note of the sweep ID.
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Use the W\&B CLI to initialize a sweep. Provide the name of your configuration file. Optionally provide the name of the project for the `project` flag. If the project is not specified, the W\&B Run is put in an "Uncategorized" project.

Use the [`wandb sweep`](/models/ref/cli/wandb-sweep) command to initialize a sweep. The following code example initializes a sweep for a `sweeps_demo` project and uses a `config.yaml` file for the configuration.

```bash
    wandb sweep --project sweeps_demo config.yaml
    ```

This command will print out a sweep ID. The sweep ID includes the entity name and the project name. Make a note of the sweep ID.
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Link last verified June 7, 2026. View original ↗
Source: Weights & Biases Docs
Link last verified: 2026-03-04