diff --git a/common/common.cpp b/common/common.cpp
index 9d9d64a16..e103fc908 100644
--- a/common/common.cpp
+++ b/common/common.cpp
@@ -699,9 +699,9 @@ bool gpt_params_parse_ex(int argc, char ** argv, gpt_params & params) {
             } else if (strncmp(sep, "bool:", 5) == 0) {
                 sep += 5;
                 kvo.tag = LLAMA_KV_OVERRIDE_BOOL;
-                if (std::strcmp(sep, "true")) {
+                if (std::strcmp(sep, "true") == 0) {
                     kvo.bool_value = true;
-                } else if (std::strcmp(sep, "false")) {
+                } else if (std::strcmp(sep, "false") == 0) {
                     kvo.bool_value = false;
                 } else {
                     fprintf(stderr, "error: Invalid boolean value for KV override: %s\n", argv[i]);
@@ -888,6 +888,9 @@ void gpt_print_usage(int /*argc*/, char ** argv, const gpt_params & params) {
     printf("                        draft model for speculative decoding (default: %s)\n", params.model.c_str());
     printf("  -ld LOGDIR, --logdir LOGDIR\n");
     printf("                        path under which to save YAML logs (no logging if unset)\n");
+    printf("  --override-kv KEY=TYPE:VALUE\n");
+    printf("                        advanced option to override model metadata by key. may be specified multiple times.\n");
+    printf("                        types: int, float, bool. example: --override-kv tokenizer.ggml.add_bos_token=bool:false\n");
     printf("\n");
 #ifndef LOG_DISABLE_LOGS
     log_print_usage();
diff --git a/llama.cpp b/llama.cpp
index 2eb807aa6..6a7dd7cb8 100644
--- a/llama.cpp
+++ b/llama.cpp
@@ -607,7 +607,7 @@ static std::string gguf_data_to_str(enum gguf_type type, const void * data, int
     }
 }
 
-static std::string gguf_kv_to_str(struct gguf_context * ctx_gguf, int i) {
+static std::string gguf_kv_to_str(const struct gguf_context * ctx_gguf, int i) {
     const enum gguf_type type = gguf_get_kv_type(ctx_gguf, i);
 
     switch (type) {
@@ -1895,16 +1895,13 @@ namespace GGUFMeta {
             if (try_override<T>(target, override)) {
                 return true;
             }
+            if (k < 0) { return false; }
             target = get_kv(ctx, k);
             return true;
         }
 
         static bool set(const gguf_context * ctx, const char * key, T & target, const struct llama_model_kv_override *override = nullptr) {
-            const int kid = gguf_find_key(ctx, key);
-            if (kid < 0) {
-                return false;
-            }
-            return set(ctx, kid, target, override);
+            return set(ctx, gguf_find_key(ctx, key), target, override);
         }
 
         static bool set(const gguf_context * ctx, const std::string & key, T & target, const struct llama_model_kv_override *override = nullptr) {
@@ -2367,6 +2364,7 @@ static void llm_load_hparams(
         llama_model_loader & ml,
         llama_model & model) {
     auto & hparams = model.hparams;
+    const gguf_context * ctx = ml.ctx_gguf;
 
     // get metadata as string
     for (int i = 0; i < gguf_get_n_kv(ctx); i++) {
@@ -2678,19 +2676,15 @@ static void llm_load_vocab(
         }
 
         // Handle add_bos_token and add_eos_token
-        std::string key = kv(LLM_KV_TOKENIZER_ADD_BOS);
-        int kid = gguf_find_key(ctx, key.c_str());
-        enum gguf_type ktype = kid < 0 ? GGUF_TYPE_COUNT : gguf_get_kv_type(ctx, kid);
-        vocab.special_add_bos = ktype == GGUF_TYPE_BOOL ? gguf_get_val_bool(ctx, kid) : -1;
-        if (ktype != GGUF_TYPE_BOOL && ktype != GGUF_TYPE_COUNT) {
-            LLAMA_LOG_WARN("%s: bad field type %d for '%s' - ignoring\n", __func__, ktype, key.c_str());
-        }
-        key = kv(LLM_KV_TOKENIZER_ADD_EOS);
-        kid = gguf_find_key(ctx, key.c_str());
-        ktype = kid < 0 ? GGUF_TYPE_COUNT : gguf_get_kv_type(ctx, kid);
-        vocab.special_add_eos = ktype == GGUF_TYPE_BOOL ? gguf_get_val_bool(ctx, kid) : -1;
-        if (ktype != GGUF_TYPE_BOOL && ktype != GGUF_TYPE_COUNT) {
-            LLAMA_LOG_WARN("%s: bad field type %d for '%s' - ignoring\n", __func__, ktype, key.c_str());
+        {
+            bool temp = true;
+
+            if (ml.get_key(LLM_KV_TOKENIZER_ADD_BOS, temp, false)) {
+                vocab.special_add_bos = int(temp);
+            }
+            if (ml.get_key(LLM_KV_TOKENIZER_ADD_EOS, temp, false)) {
+                vocab.special_add_eos = int(temp);
+            }
         }
     }