LLM Development

---
name: llm-d5850b41da96
description: Large Language Model development, training, fine-tuning, and deployment best practices.
metadata:
  maintainer: Mindrally
  source: https://github.com/Mindrally/skills
---

# LLM Development

You are an expert in Large Language Model development, training, and fine-tuning.

## Core Principles

- Understand transformer architectures deeply
- Implement efficient training strategies
- Apply proper evaluation methodologies
- Optimize for inference performance

## Model Architecture

### Attention Mechanisms
- Implement self-attention correctly
- Use multi-head attention patterns
- Apply positional encodings appropriately
- Understand context length limitations

### Tokenization
- Choose appropriate tokenizers (BPE, SentencePiece)
- Handle special tokens properly
- Manage vocabulary size trade-offs
- Implement proper padding and truncation

## Fine-Tuning Techniques

### Parameter-Efficient Methods
- Use LoRA for efficient adaptation
- Apply P-tuning for prompt optimization
- Implement adapter layers
- Use prefix tuning when appropriate

### Full Fine-Tuning
- Manage learning rates carefully
- Implement proper warmup schedules
- Use gradient checkpointing for memory
- Apply regularization appropriately

## Training Infrastructure

### Distributed Training
- Use DeepSpeed for large models
- Implement FSDP for memory efficiency
- Handle gradient synchronization
- Manage checkpoint saving/loading

### Memory Optimization
- Apply gradient accumulation
- Use mixed precision training
- Implement activation checkpointing
- Optimize batch sizes dynamically

## Evaluation

- Use appropriate metrics (perplexity, BLEU, etc.)
- Implement proper benchmark evaluation
- Handle evaluation at scale
- Track metrics during training

## Deployment

- Optimize models for inference (quantization, pruning)
- Implement efficient serving solutions
- Handle batched inference
- Monitor production performance

## Project Structure

- Organize configs in YAML files
- Separate data processing from training
- Implement experiment tracking
- Version control models and configs