axolotl

Retrains an open-source AI model on your own data from a single small config file instead of code, including the cheaper methods that only adjust part of the model and training spread across many GPUs.

WHEN TO USE

SCOPE

USE FOR

Fine-tune a 7B+ open-source model with LoRA or QLoRA from one YAML config file.
Split training across multiple GPUs and nodes using FSDP with parameter offloading.
Run an NCCL bandwidth test first to catch multi-GPU communication bottlenecks.
Save a fine-tuned model in a compressed format that stays compatible with vLLM.

This is a saved copy of the skill's SKILL.md instructions. It may differ from the upstream file or the version you install.

In this document (8)

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:

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

This skill ships inside the AI Research Skills plugin.

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npx skills add orchestra-research/ai-research-skills --skill "axolotl" --full-depth

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What's inside

Files included with this skill.

View on GitHub

Axolotl Skill

When to Use This Skill

Quick Reference

Common Patterns

Example Code Patterns

Reference Files

Working with This Skill

For Beginners

For Specific Features

For Code Examples

Resources

references/

scripts/

assets/

Notes

Updating

Local tool required

What's inside

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