llm-finetuning

Gate fine-tuned checkpoints with drift budgets, paired comparison, and forgetting checks before promotion. Use after a training run produces a checkpoint, when deciding whether a tuned model ships, or when a promoted model needs re-gating against updated goldens.

Prepare, format, and validate datasets for supervised fine-tuning and preference training. Use when converting raw data into training format, applying chat templates, configuring sequence packing, generating synthetic training data, or writing a dataset card before a run.

Build the evaluation harness that gates every fine-tuning run — golden sets, per-failure-mode graders, judge calibration, and base-model baselines. Use when starting a fine-tuning effort, when converting traces into an eval set, or when calibrating a judge against human labels.

Decide whether to fine-tune at all, and route to the right method (SFT, DPO/ORPO/KTO, GRPO/RLVR, continued pretraining) and base model. Use when starting any fine-tuning effort, when unsure whether RAG or prompting would suffice, or when choosing between preference-optimization and reinforcement methods.

Train reasoning and verifiable-task behavior with GRPO and reinforcement learning from verifiable rewards (RLVR). Use when task success is algorithmically checkable (math, code, tool calls, structured output), when designing GRPO reward functions, or when a GRPO run diverges or reward-hacks.

Configure LoRA and QLoRA supervised fine-tuning with current best-practice hyperparameters. Use when writing or reviewing a LoRA/QLoRA training configuration, choosing rank/alpha/target modules, or deciding between LoRA, QLoRA, and full fine-tuning.

Align a fine-tuned model with preference data using DPO, ORPO, KTO, or SimPO. Use when preference pairs or thumbs-up/down feedback exist, when choosing between preference-optimization methods, or when a DPO run needs hyperparameters or debugging.

Export a promoted fine-tuned model in the right deployment format — merged safetensors, LoRA-only, GGUF with imatrix, or FP8. Use after a checkpoint passes promotion, when choosing a quantization format for a target device, or when an exported model fails its smoke test.

Convert evaluation traces and production logs into SFT examples and preference pairs. Use when graded traces or failure examples exist and need to become training data, when applying rejection sampling to model outputs, or when building DPO pairs from passing and failing runs.

Fine-tune vision-language models (VLMs) with supervised learning on image+text data. Use when adapting a VLM to a visual domain or task, configuring frozen-vision-tower LoRA, or debugging a VLM fine-tune that trains without learning.