Expert guidance for fine-tuning LLMs with Axolotl - YAML configs, 100+ models, LoRA/QLoRA, DPO/KTO/ORPO/GRPO, multimodal support
Comprehensive assistance with axolotl development, generated from official documentation.
This skill should be triggered when:
Pattern 1: To validate that acceptable data transfer speeds exist for your training job, running NCCL Tests can help pinpoint bottlenecks, for example:
./build/all_reduce_perf -b 8 -e 128M -f 2 -g 3
Pattern 2: Configure your model to use FSDP in the Axolotl yaml. For example:
fsdp_version: 2
fsdp_config:
offload_params: true
state_dict_type: FULL_STATE_DICT
auto_wrap_policy: TRANSFORMER_BASED_WRAP
transformer_layer_cls_to_wrap: LlamaDecoderLayer
reshard_after_forward: true
Pattern 3: The context_parallel_size should be a divisor of the total number of GPUs. For example:
context_parallel_size
Pattern 4: For example: - With 8 GPUs and no sequence parallelism: 8 different batches processed per step - With 8 GPUs and context_parallel_size=4: Only 2 different batches processed per step (each split across 4 GPUs) - If your per-GPU micro_batch_size is 2, the global batch size decreases from 16 to 4
context_parallel_size=4
Pattern 5: Setting save_compressed: true in your configuration enables saving models in a compressed format, which: - Reduces disk space usage by approximately 40% - Maintains compatibility with vLLM for accelerated inference - Maintains compatibility with llmcompressor for further optimization (example: quantization)
save_compressed: true
Pattern 6: Note It is not necessary to place your integration in the integrations folder. It can be in any location, so long as it’s installed in a package in your python env. See this repo for an example: https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/diff-transformer
integrations
Pattern 7: Handle both single-example and batched data. - single example: sample[‘input_ids’] is a list[int] - batched data: sample[‘input_ids’] is a list[list[int]]
utils.trainer.drop_long_seq(sample, sequence_len=2048, min_sequence_len=2)
Example 1 (python):
cli.cloud.modal_.ModalCloud(config, app=None)
Example 2 (python):
cli.cloud.modal_.run_cmd(cmd, run_folder, volumes=None)
Example 3 (python):
core.trainers.base.AxolotlTrainer(
*_args,
bench_data_collator=None,
eval_data_collator=None,
dataset_tags=None,
**kwargs,
)
Example 4 (python):
core.trainers.base.AxolotlTrainer.log(logs, start_time=None)
Example 5 (python):
prompt_strategies.input_output.RawInputOutputPrompter()
This skill includes comprehensive documentation in references/:
Use view to read specific reference files when detailed information is needed.
Start with the getting_started or tutorials reference files for foundational concepts.
Use the appropriate category reference file (api, guides, etc.) for detailed information.
The quick reference section above contains common patterns extracted from the official docs.
Organized documentation extracted from official sources. These files contain:
Add helper scripts here for common automation tasks.
Add templates, boilerplate, or example projects here.
To refresh this skill with updated documentation:
Copy a source-pinned command for your client. You run it yourself.
Destination: .claude/skills/fine-tuning-axolotl · pinned to the source commit
# Run from your project root
git clone https://github.com/davila7/claude-code-templates.git .skillboard-tmp
git -C .skillboard-tmp checkout 5cc17cf267132cc690dee82239b80a99ec82e4f8
mkdir -p ".claude/skills"
cp -r ".skillboard-tmp/cli-tool/components/skills/ai-research/fine-tuning-axolotl" ".claude/skills/"
rm -rf .skillboard-tmpReview the source before running. This copies files into your project; it is not a one-click install and does not verify runtime safety.
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y gitnpm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code# Run from your project root
git clone https://github.com/davila7/claude-code-templates.git .skillboard-tmp
git -C .skillboard-tmp checkout 5cc17cf267132cc690dee82239b80a99ec82e4f8
mkdir -p ".claude/skills"
cp -r ".skillboard-tmp/cli-tool/components/skills/ai-research/fine-tuning-axolotl" ".claude/skills/"
rm -rf .skillboard-tmpDestination: .claude/skills/fine-tuning-axolotl
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