diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 02df00e..6ec9ede 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -286,10 +286,16 @@ You must specify exactly one determining factor for training duration in the `tr
 
 ### 6. Environment Modes
 
-- **Offline**: `offline: true`  
+- **Offline**: `offline: true`
   Disables Hugging Face Hub / Weights & Biases network calls (essential for air-gapped nodes).
-- **Debug**: `debug.enabled: true`  
+- **Debug**: `debug.enabled: true`
   Forces `report_to: none`, uses a separate output directory, and allows overwriting existing runs.
+- **Tokenize only**: `--tokenize-only` (CLI flag on `train.py` / `submit.py`)
+  Exits immediately after the trainer is initialized — dataset loading, tokenization, and packing all run, but the training loop is never entered. Useful for pretokenizing the dataset before committing to a full run. When passed to `submit.py`, the job is automatically constrained to 1 node and 1 GPU.
+
+  ```bash
+  python scripts/submit.py --config configs/trl/sft.yaml --tokenize-only
+  ```
 
 ### 7. Logging & Experiment Tracking
 
diff --git a/scripts/submit.py b/scripts/submit.py
index b5002bf..b86cbc2 100644
--- a/scripts/submit.py
+++ b/scripts/submit.py
@@ -43,17 +43,26 @@ def _parse_args() -> tuple[str, list[str], bool]:
         action="store_true",
         help="Skip the interactive guardrails review and submit immediately.",
     )
+    parser.add_argument(
+        "--tokenize-only",
+        action="store_true",
+        help="Pass --tokenize-only to train.py — exits after trainer initialization.",
+    )
     known, unknown = parser.parse_known_args()
-    return known.config, unknown, known.confirm
+    return known.config, unknown, known.confirm, known.tokenize_only
 
 
 def main() -> None:
     setup_logging()
 
-    config_path, cli_overrides, confirmed = _parse_args()
+    config_path, cli_overrides, confirmed, tokenize_only = _parse_args()
     logger.info("Loading config from %s", config_path)
     config = PostTrainingConfig.load(config_path, cli_overrides)
 
+    if tokenize_only:
+        config.slurm.num_nodes = 1
+        config.slurm.gpus_per_node = 1
+
     if config.offline:
         logger.info(
             "offline=True: pre-fetching models and datasets on the login node "
@@ -66,7 +75,7 @@ def main() -> None:
     logger.info("Run directory: %s", run_dir)
 
     if not confirmed:
-        run_guardrails(config, run_dir)
+        run_guardrails(config, run_dir, tokenize_only=tokenize_only)
 
     # CRITICAL: Set run_name so it's preserved in the frozen config.
     # This ensures train.py uses the same directory when it loads the config.
diff --git a/scripts/train.py b/scripts/train.py
index 571d5ba..8f3fd7f 100644
--- a/scripts/train.py
+++ b/scripts/train.py
@@ -69,14 +69,19 @@ def _parse_args() -> tuple[str, list[str]]:
         default="configs/trl/sft.yaml",
         help="Path to the YAML config file.",
     )
+    parser.add_argument(
+        "--tokenize-only",
+        action="store_true",
+        help="Exit after initializing the trainer (useful for verifying tokenization).",
+    )
     known, unknown = parser.parse_known_args()
-    return known.config, unknown
+    return known.config, known.tokenize_only, unknown
 
 
 def main() -> None:
     setup_logging()
 
-    config_path, cli_overrides = _parse_args()
+    config_path, tokenize_only, cli_overrides = _parse_args()
     logger.info("Loading config from %s", config_path)
     config = PostTrainingConfig.load(config_path, cli_overrides)
 
@@ -108,6 +113,10 @@ def main() -> None:
     # ── Build trainer & launch ──────────────────────────────────────
     trainer = build_trainer(config, run_dir)
 
+    if tokenize_only:
+        logger.info("--tokenize-only set — exiting after trainer initialization.")
+        return
+
     # Auto-resume from the latest checkpoint if one exists.
     checkpoints_dir = run_dir / "checkpoints"
     existing = sorted(checkpoints_dir.glob("checkpoint-*"))
diff --git a/src/post_training/utils/guardrails.py b/src/post_training/utils/guardrails.py
index fac9dc9..08db38f 100644
--- a/src/post_training/utils/guardrails.py
+++ b/src/post_training/utils/guardrails.py
@@ -126,7 +126,7 @@ def _batch_summary(config: PostTrainingConfig, total_gpus: int) -> tuple[str, st
 # ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
 
-def run_guardrails(config: PostTrainingConfig, run_dir: Path) -> None:
+def run_guardrails(config: PostTrainingConfig, run_dir: Path, tokenize_only: bool = False) -> None:
     """Print a full config summary and ask for confirmation.
 
     Parameters
@@ -261,6 +261,12 @@ def run_guardrails(config: PostTrainingConfig, run_dir: Path) -> None:
         _row("Debug mode", _red("*** ENABLED — output dir may be overwritten ***"), warn=True)
     else:
         _row("Debug mode", "disabled")
+    if tokenize_only:
+        _row(
+            "Tokenize only",
+            _yellow("*** ENABLED — will exit after trainer init, no training ***"),
+            warn=True,
+        )
 
     # ------------------------------------------------------------------
     # Final confirmation