diff --git a/pkg/mlx/tokenizer/tokenizer.go b/pkg/mlx/tokenizer/tokenizer.go
index 4a1258a..9dd9450 100644
--- a/pkg/mlx/tokenizer/tokenizer.go
+++ b/pkg/mlx/tokenizer/tokenizer.go
@@ -29,10 +29,10 @@ type mergePair struct {
 // tokenizerJSON is the HuggingFace tokenizer.json format.
 type tokenizerJSON struct {
 	Model struct {
-		Type     string          `json:"type"`
-		Vocab    json.RawMessage `json:"vocab"`
-		Merges   []string        `json:"merges"`
-		ByteFallback bool        `json:"byte_fallback"`
+		Type         string          `json:"type"`
+		Vocab        json.RawMessage `json:"vocab"`
+		Merges       json.RawMessage `json:"merges"`
+		ByteFallback bool           `json:"byte_fallback"`
 	} `json:"model"`
 	AddedTokens []struct {
 		ID      int32  `json:"id"`
@@ -69,11 +69,27 @@ func Load(path string) (*Tokenizer, error) {
 		t.invVocab[v] = k
 	}
 
-	// Parse merges
-	for rank, merge := range tj.Model.Merges {
-		parts := strings.SplitN(merge, " ", 2)
-		if len(parts) == 2 {
-			t.merges = append(t.merges, mergePair{a: parts[0], b: parts[1], rank: rank})
+	// Parse merges — supports both ["a b", ...] and [["a","b"], ...] formats
+	if len(tj.Model.Merges) > 0 {
+		// Try array-of-strings first
+		var stringMerges []string
+		if err := json.Unmarshal(tj.Model.Merges, &stringMerges); err == nil {
+			for rank, merge := range stringMerges {
+				parts := strings.SplitN(merge, " ", 2)
+				if len(parts) == 2 {
+					t.merges = append(t.merges, mergePair{a: parts[0], b: parts[1], rank: rank})
+				}
+			}
+		} else {
+			// Try array-of-arrays: [["a","b"], ...]
+			var arrayMerges [][]string
+			if err := json.Unmarshal(tj.Model.Merges, &arrayMerges); err == nil {
+				for rank, pair := range arrayMerges {
+					if len(pair) == 2 {
+						t.merges = append(t.merges, mergePair{a: pair[0], b: pair[1], rank: rank})
+					}
+				}
+			}
 		}
 	}