diff --git a/.devops/nix/package.nix b/.devops/nix/package.nix
index 03f576842..911c42ecb 100644
--- a/.devops/nix/package.nix
+++ b/.devops/nix/package.nix
@@ -90,7 +90,6 @@ let
       ps.tiktoken
       ps.torchWithoutCuda
       ps.transformers
-      ps.python-frontmatter
 
       # server bench
       ps.matplotlib
diff --git a/gguf-py/gguf/metadata.py b/gguf-py/gguf/metadata.py
index 0e38bf076..0cfaf80aa 100644
--- a/gguf-py/gguf/metadata.py
+++ b/gguf-py/gguf/metadata.py
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@ from __future__ import annotations
 
 import re
 import json
+import yaml
 import logging
 from pathlib import Path
 from typing import Any, Optional
@@ -116,13 +117,19 @@ class Metadata:
         if not model_card_path.is_file():
             return {}
 
-        try:
-            import frontmatter
-            with open(model_card_path, "r", encoding="utf-8") as f:
-                return frontmatter.load(f).to_dict()
-        except ModuleNotFoundError:
-            logger.warning("module 'frontmatter' not available. Metadata from README.md will NOT be read.")
-            return {}
+        # The model card metadata is assumed to always be in YAML
+        # ref: https://github.com/huggingface/transformers/blob/a5c642fe7a1f25d3bdcd76991443ba6ff7ee34b2/src/transformers/modelcard.py#L468-L473
+        with open(model_card_path, "r", encoding="utf-8") as f:
+            if f.readline() == "---\n":
+                raw = f.read().partition("---\n")[0]
+                data = yaml.safe_load(raw)
+                if isinstance(data, dict):
+                    return data
+                else:
+                    logger.error(f"while reading YAML model card frontmatter, data is {type(data)} instead of dict")
+                    return {}
+            else:
+                return {}
 
     @staticmethod
     def load_hf_parameters(model_path: Optional[Path] = None) -> dict[str, Any]:
diff --git a/gguf-py/pyproject.toml b/gguf-py/pyproject.toml
index 62129126b..19f6761e2 100644
--- a/gguf-py/pyproject.toml
+++ b/gguf-py/pyproject.toml
@@ -22,6 +22,7 @@ classifiers = [
 python = ">=3.8"
 numpy = ">=1.17"
 tqdm = ">=4.27"
+pyyaml = ">=5.1"
 
 [tool.poetry.dev-dependencies]
 pytest = "^5.2"
diff --git a/requirements/requirements-convert_legacy_llama.txt b/requirements/requirements-convert_legacy_llama.txt
index 493dbe18c..1d07b0952 100644
--- a/requirements/requirements-convert_legacy_llama.txt
+++ b/requirements/requirements-convert_legacy_llama.txt
@@ -3,4 +3,3 @@ sentencepiece~=0.2.0
 transformers>=4.40.1,<5.0.0
 gguf>=0.1.0
 protobuf>=4.21.0,<5.0.0
-python-frontmatter~=1.0.1