diff --git a/src/model.rs b/src/model.rs
index d695bb9..dff1a8a 100644
--- a/src/model.rs
+++ b/src/model.rs
@@ -64,32 +64,12 @@ impl StaticModel {
         // Load the tokenizer
         let tokenizer = Tokenizer::from_file(&tok_path).map_err(|e| anyhow!("failed to load tokenizer: {e}"))?;
 
-        // Median-token-length hack for pre-truncation
-        let mut lens: Vec<usize> = tokenizer.get_vocab(false).keys().map(|tk| tk.len()).collect();
-        lens.sort_unstable();
-        let median_token_length = lens.get(lens.len() / 2).copied().unwrap_or(1);
-
         // Read normalize default from config.json
         let cfg_file = std::fs::File::open(&cfg_path).context("failed to read config.json")?;
         let cfg: Value = serde_json::from_reader(&cfg_file).context("failed to parse config.json")?;
         let cfg_norm = cfg.get("normalize").and_then(Value::as_bool).unwrap_or(true);
         let normalize = normalize.unwrap_or(cfg_norm);
 
-        // Serialize the tokenizer to JSON, then parse it and get the unk_token
-        let spec_json = tokenizer
-            .to_string(false)
-            .map_err(|e| anyhow!("tokenizer -> JSON failed: {e}"))?;
-        let spec: Value = serde_json::from_str(&spec_json)?;
-        let unk_token = spec
-            .get("model")
-            .and_then(|m| m.get("unk_token"))
-            .and_then(Value::as_str)
-            .unwrap_or("[UNK]");
-        let unk_token_id = tokenizer
-            .token_to_id(unk_token)
-            .ok_or_else(|| anyhow!("tokenizer claims unk_token='{unk_token}' but it isn't in the vocab"))?
-            as usize;
-
         // Load the safetensors
         let model_bytes = fs::read(&mdl_path).context("failed to read model.safetensors")?;
         let safet = SafeTensors::deserialize(&model_bytes).context("failed to parse safetensors")?;
@@ -115,7 +95,6 @@ impl StaticModel {
             Dtype::I8 => raw.iter().map(|&b| f32::from(b as i8)).collect(),
             other => return Err(anyhow!("unsupported tensor dtype: {other:?}")),
         };
-        let embeddings = Array2::from_shape_vec((rows, cols), floats).context("failed to build embeddings array")?;
 
         // Load optional weights for vocabulary quantization
         let weights = match safet.tensor("weights") {
@@ -154,6 +133,56 @@ impl StaticModel {
             Err(_) => None,
         };
 
+        Self::from_raw_parts(tokenizer, &floats, rows, cols, normalize, weights, token_mapping)
+    }
+
+    /// Construct from pre-parsed parts.
+    ///
+    /// # Arguments
+    /// * `tokenizer` - Pre-deserialized tokenizer
+    /// * `embeddings` - Raw f32 embedding data
+    /// * `rows` - Number of vocabulary entries
+    /// * `cols` - Embedding dimension
+    /// * `normalize` - Whether to L2-normalize output embeddings
+    /// * `weights` - Optional per-token weights for quantized models
+    /// * `token_mapping` - Optional token ID mapping for quantized models
+    pub fn from_raw_parts(
+        tokenizer: Tokenizer,
+        embeddings: &[f32],
+        rows: usize,
+        cols: usize,
+        normalize: bool,
+        weights: Option<Vec<f32>>,
+        token_mapping: Option<Vec<usize>>,
+    ) -> Result<Self> {
+        if embeddings.len() != rows * cols {
+            return Err(anyhow!(
+                "embeddings length {} != rows {} * cols {}",
+                embeddings.len(),
+                rows,
+                cols
+            ));
+        }
+
+        // Median-token-length hack for pre-truncation
+        let mut lens: Vec<usize> = tokenizer.get_vocab(false).keys().map(|tk| tk.len()).collect();
+        lens.sort_unstable();
+        let median_token_length = lens.get(lens.len() / 2).copied().unwrap_or(1);
+
+        // Get unk_token from tokenizer (optional - BPE tokenizers may not have one)
+        let spec_json = tokenizer
+            .to_string(false)
+            .map_err(|e| anyhow!("tokenizer -> JSON failed: {e}"))?;
+        let spec: Value = serde_json::from_str(&spec_json)?;
+        let unk_token = spec
+            .get("model")
+            .and_then(|m| m.get("unk_token"))
+            .and_then(Value::as_str);
+        let unk_token_id = unk_token.and_then(|tok| tokenizer.token_to_id(tok)).map(|id| id as usize);
+
+        let embeddings = Array2::from_shape_vec((rows, cols), embeddings.to_vec())
+            .context("failed to build embeddings array")?;
+
         Ok(Self {
             tokenizer,
             embeddings,
@@ -161,7 +190,7 @@ impl StaticModel {
             token_mapping,
             normalize,
             median_token_length,
-            unk_token_id: Some(unk_token_id),
+            unk_token_id,
         })
     }
 
diff --git a/tests/test_model.rs b/tests/test_model.rs
index f09b8c2..abb3761 100644
--- a/tests/test_model.rs
+++ b/tests/test_model.rs
@@ -70,3 +70,26 @@ fn test_normalization_flag_override() {
         "Without normalization override, norm should be larger"
     );
 }
+
+/// Test from_raw_parts constructor
+#[test]
+fn test_from_raw_parts() {
+    use std::fs;
+    use tokenizers::Tokenizer;
+    use safetensors::SafeTensors;
+
+    let path = "tests/fixtures/test-model-float32";
+    let tokenizer = Tokenizer::from_file(format!("{path}/tokenizer.json")).unwrap();
+    let bytes = fs::read(format!("{path}/model.safetensors")).unwrap();
+    let tensors = SafeTensors::deserialize(&bytes).unwrap();
+    let tensor = tensors.tensor("embeddings").unwrap();
+    let [rows, cols]: [usize; 2] = tensor.shape().try_into().unwrap();
+    let floats: Vec<f32> = tensor.data()
+        .chunks_exact(4)
+        .map(|b| f32::from_le_bytes(b.try_into().unwrap()))
+        .collect();
+
+    let model = StaticModel::from_raw_parts(tokenizer, &floats, rows, cols, true, None, None).unwrap();
+    let emb = model.encode_single("hello");
+    assert!(!emb.is_empty());
+}