What problem does it solve?
Manually configuring Axolotl for LLM fine-tuning is complex and error-prone, requiring deep familiarity with YAML schemas, distributed training setups, and dataset formatting rules for diverse fine-tuning paradigms.
Core Features & Use Cases
- Multi-Paradigm Fine-Tuning Support: Configure supervised fine-tuning (SFT), preference-based post-training (DPO, GRPO, ORPO, KTO), and multimodal model training for 100+ supported model architectures.
- Distributed Training Guidance: Step-by-step instructions for setting up FSDP, DeepSpeed, context parallelism, and mixed precision (FP16/BF16/FP8) training to optimize performance and memory usage.
- Dataset Formatting Assistance: Detailed documentation for pre-tokenized, template-free, conversation, and instruction dataset formats, plus troubleshooting for common chat template and tokenization errors.
- Use Case Example: A machine learning researcher fine-tuning a Llama 3 8B model with LoRA for code generation can use this skill to generate a valid YAML config, validate NCCL communication speeds, and debug EOS token masking issues without searching through scattered documentation.
Quick Start
Use the axolotl skill to create a valid YAML configuration for 4-bit QLoRA fine-tuning of a Mistral 7B model with DeepSpeed ZeRO-3 and a custom instruction dataset.