--- title: How I Understand Flow Matching | daily.dev description: A conceptual walkthrough of flow-based generative models, starting from normalizing flows and the change-of-variable formula, through continuous normalizing... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/how-i-understand-flow-matching-5qy9r5200 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: How I Understand Flow Matching | daily.dev og:description: A conceptual walkthrough of flow-based generative models, starting from normalizing flows and the change-of-variable formula, through continuous normalizing... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/how-i-understand-flow-matching-5qy9r5200 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/5qY9R5200.png og:image:alt: How I Understand Flow Matching og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # How I Understand Flow Matching **[Jia-Bin Huang](https://daily.dev/sources/jbhuang0604)** · 16 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A conceptual walkthrough of flow-based generative models, starting from normalizing flows and the change-of-variable formula, through continuous normalizing flows and neural ODEs, and culminating in flow matching as a scalable training method. Key topics include coupling layers, autoregressive flows, residual flows, the continuity equation, and conditional flow matching objectives. The content also draws comparisons between flow matching and diffusion models, highlighting how flow matching generalizes and simplifies the diffusion framework by removing the constraints of a fixed forward diffusion process. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Learning the integral of a diffusion model](https://daily.dev/posts/learning-the-integral-of-a-diffusion-model-o3pslj7um) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Scaling Categorical Flow Maps](https://daily.dev/posts/scaling-categorical-flow-maps-hhten4rd6) · Apple Machine Learning Research · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#genai](https://daily.dev/tags/genai), [#diffusion-models](https://daily.dev/tags/diffusion-models) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/how-i-understand-flow-matching-5qy9r5200) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"How I Understand Flow Matching","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-i-understand-flow-matching-5qy9r5200","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-i-understand-flow-matching-5qy9r5200"},"datePublished":"2026-04-19T08:05:24.736Z","dateModified":"2026-04-19T08:06:52.954Z","description":"A conceptual walkthrough of flow-based generative models, starting from normalizing flows and the change-of-variable formula, through continuous normalizing...","image":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/DDq_pIfHqLs/sddefault.jpg","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/DDq_pIfHqLs/sddefault.jpg","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Jia-Bin Huang","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Jia-Bin Huang","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--8hwFrfWM--/f_auto,q_auto/v1776585907/logos/jbhuang0604","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/jbhuang0604"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-i-understand-flow-matching-5qy9r5200","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"genai,diffusion-models","timeRequired":"PT16M","video":{"@type":"VideoObject","name":"How I Understand Flow Matching","description":"A conceptual walkthrough of flow-based generative models, starting from normalizing flows and the change-of-variable formula, through continuous normalizing...","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/DDq_pIfHqLs/sddefault.jpg","uploadDate":"2026-04-19T08:05:24.736Z","duration":"PT16M","url":"https://api.daily.dev/r/5qY9R5200","embedUrl":"https://www.youtube.com/embed/DDq_pIfHqLs"}} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Jia-Bin Huang","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/jbhuang0604"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"How I Understand Flow Matching"}]} ```