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Axolotl Skill

Comprehensive assistance with axolotl development, generated from official documentation.

When to Use This Skill

This skill should be triggered when:

  • Working with axolotl
  • Asking about axolotl features or APIs
  • Implementing axolotl solutions
  • Debugging axolotl code
  • Learning axolotl best practices

Quick Reference

Common Patterns

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 Code Patterns

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()

Reference Files

This skill includes comprehensive documentation in references/:

  • api.md - Api documentation
  • dataset-formats.md - Dataset-Formats documentation
  • other.md - Other documentation

Use view to read specific reference files when detailed information is needed.

Working with This Skill

For Beginners

Start with the getting_started or tutorials reference files for foundational concepts.

For Specific Features

Use the appropriate category reference file (api, guides, etc.) for detailed information.

For Code Examples

The quick reference section above contains common patterns extracted from the official docs.

Resources

references/

Organized documentation extracted from official sources. These files contain:

  • Detailed explanations
  • Code examples with language annotations
  • Links to original documentation
  • Table of contents for quick navigation

scripts/

Add helper scripts here for common automation tasks.

assets/

Add templates, boilerplate, or example projects here.

Notes

  • This skill was automatically generated from official documentation
  • Reference files preserve the structure and examples from source docs
  • Code examples include language detection for better syntax highlighting
  • Quick reference patterns are extracted from common usage examples in the docs

Updating

To refresh this skill with updated documentation:

  1. Re-run the scraper with the same configuration
  2. The skill will be rebuilt with the latest information

Source

git clone https://github.com/Orchestra-Research/AI-Research-SKILLs/blob/main/03-fine-tuning/axolotl/SKILL.mdView on GitHub

Overview

This skill provides expert guidance for fine-tuning LLMs using Axolotl, covering YAML configs, 100+ models, LoRA/QLoRA, DPO KTO ORPO GRPO, and multimodal support. It distills official documentation into practical steps, patterns, and examples to accelerate development and debugging.

How This Skill Works

The skill consolidates Axolotl docs into actionable guidance, presenting common patterns, sample configurations, and runnable examples. You will learn to craft YAML configs, apply FSDP with offload, control context parallelism, and save models in compressed formats for faster inference.

When to Use It

  • Working with Axolotl and needing practical config guidance
  • Asking about Axolotl features or APIs
  • Implementing Axolotl-based solutions
  • Debugging Axolotl code
  • Learning Axolotl best practices

Quick Start

  1. Step 1: Install Axolotl and dependencies (axolotl, torch, transformers, datasets, peft, accelerate, deepspeed)
  2. Step 2: Create a sample YAML config including fsdp_version, fsdp_config, context_parallel_size, and save_compressed
  3. Step 3: Run the trainer example (core.trainers.base.AxolotlTrainer) and review logs for patterns

Best Practices

  • Validate data transfer speeds with NCCL tests to identify bottlenecks
  • Use FSDP settings in the Axolotl YAML with offload and state dict options
  • Ensure context_parallel_size divides your GPUs and test different batch splits
  • Enable save_compressed to reduce disk usage and maintain compatibility with vLLM
  • Place integrations anywhere in your Python environment; no fixed integrations folder required

Example Use Cases

  • Running an NCCL all_reduce test to benchmark bandwidth and spot bottlenecks
  • Configuring FSDP in YAML with fsdp_version 2 and offload_params enabled
  • Setting context_parallel_size to 4 on an 8 GPU setup to adjust batch flow
  • Enabling save_compressed: true to shrink saved models while preserving compatibility
  • Noting that integrations can live outside the integrations folder and linking to a repo for reference

Frequently Asked Questions

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