  To advance the neural decoding of Portuguese, in this paper we present a
fully open Transformer-based, instruction-tuned decoder model that sets a new
state of the art in this respect. To develop this decoder, which we named
Gerv\'asio PT*, a strong LLaMA~2 7B model was used as a starting point, and its
further improvement through additional training was done over language
resources that include new instruction data sets of Portuguese prepared for
this purpose, which are also contributed in this paper. All versions of
Gerv\'asio are open source and distributed for free under an open license,
including for either research or commercial usage, and can be run on
consumer-grade hardware, thus seeking to contribute to the advancement of
research and innovation in language technology for Portuguese.
