diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index a3c82a25b7..545dce4a0e 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -8,3 +8,9 @@ __pycache__/
 *.pt
 *.pyc
 input.txt
+*.venv
+*.code-workspace
+out/
+out-*/
+wandb/*
+data/*/samples/*
diff --git a/data/shakespeare_char/prepare.py b/data/shakespeare_char/prepare.py
index 9fd1621d55..8eb5f8362d 100644
--- a/data/shakespeare_char/prepare.py
+++ b/data/shakespeare_char/prepare.py
@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@
 encoder and decoder and some other related info.
 """
 import os
-import pickle
+import dill
 import requests
 import numpy as np
 
@@ -54,11 +54,11 @@ def decode(l):
 # save the meta information as well, to help us encode/decode later
 meta = {
     'vocab_size': vocab_size,
-    'itos': itos,
-    'stoi': stoi,
+    'encode': encode,
+    'decode': decode,
 }
 with open(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'meta.pkl'), 'wb') as f:
-    pickle.dump(meta, f)
+    dill.dump(meta, f, recurse=True)
 
 # length of dataset in characters:  1115394
 # all the unique characters:
diff --git a/sample.py b/sample.py
index d25d6e0861..50b49de43c 100644
--- a/sample.py
+++ b/sample.py
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 Sample from a trained model
 """
 import os
-import pickle
+import dill
 from contextlib import nullcontext
 import torch
 import tiktoken
@@ -61,11 +61,8 @@
 if load_meta:
     print(f"Loading meta from {meta_path}...")
     with open(meta_path, 'rb') as f:
-        meta = pickle.load(f)
-    # TODO want to make this more general to arbitrary encoder/decoder schemes
-    stoi, itos = meta['stoi'], meta['itos']
-    encode = lambda s: [stoi[c] for c in s]
-    decode = lambda l: ''.join([itos[i] for i in l])
+        meta = dill.load(f)
+    encode, decode = meta['encode'], meta['decode']
 else:
     # ok let's assume gpt-2 encodings by default
     print("No meta.pkl found, assuming GPT-2 encodings...")
diff --git a/train.py b/train.py
index a482ab7f4e..cf3454b575 100644
--- a/train.py
+++ b/train.py
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@
 import os
 import time
 import math
-import pickle
+import dill
 from contextlib import nullcontext
 
 import numpy as np
@@ -136,7 +136,7 @@ def get_batch(split):
 meta_vocab_size = None
 if os.path.exists(meta_path):
     with open(meta_path, 'rb') as f:
-        meta = pickle.load(f)
+        meta = dill.load(f)
     meta_vocab_size = meta['vocab_size']
     print(f"found vocab_size = {meta_vocab_size} (inside {meta_path})")