axolotl
Expert guidance for fine-tuning LLMs with Axolotl - YAML configs, 100+ models, LoRA/QLoRA, DPO/KTO/ORPO/GRPO, multimodal support
Install / Use
npx skills add Orchestra-Research/AI-Research-SKILLs --skill axolotlInstalls into whichever agent you are using.
SKILL.md
Installable skill definition
Quality Score
Category
AI & Machine LearningSupported Platforms
Our assessment of axolotl
axolotl scores 89/100 on our quality scale, 239th of 690 AI & Machine Learning skills we index (top 35%).
Its SKILL.md is 4.7 KB long, well organised into 16 sections with 12 code examples: a solid amount of guidance for an agent.
With 13,031 GitHub stars, it is one of the more widely adopted skills in the catalogue.
Maintenance, license and trust
- The repository was last updated about 3 months ago. That is recent enough to be usable, but agent tooling moves fast, so check the instructions against your agent's current version.
- It is released under the MIT license, a permissive license that allows use, modification and commercial use with attribution.
- Its trust signals score 98/100, with no cautions. These come from repository metadata, not a code audit — read the skill file before letting an agent act on it.
axolotl compared with similar skills
All 4 of these similar skills score higher than axolotl; compare them before choosing.
| Skill | Score | Stars | Updated | Format |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| axolotl (this skill)by Orchestra-Research | 89 | 13.0k | 3mo ago | SKILL.md |
| claude-memby thedotmack | 100 | 94.7k | today | CLAUDE.md |
| Understand-Anythingby Egonex-AI | 100 | 84.2k | 14d ago | CLAUDE.md |
| headroomby headroomlabs-ai | 100 | 73.8k | today | CLAUDE.md |
| CowAgentby zhayujie | 100 | 47.1k | today | CLAUDE.md |
Frequently asked questions
- How do I install axolotl?
- Run
npx skills add Orchestra-Research/AI-Research-SKILLs --skill axolotl. The install tabs above show the steps for each supported agent. - Which AI agents does axolotl work with?
- It is written for Universal, as a SKILL.md file. Other agents that read the same format can often use it too.
- Is axolotl safe to use?
- It is MIT-licensed and scores 98/100 on trust signals. Skills are instructions an agent will follow, so read the file before installing it and do not approve commands you do not understand.
- Is axolotl still maintained?
- The repository was last updated about 3 months ago. That is recent enough to be usable, but agent tooling moves fast, so check the instructions against your agent's current version.
Skill content
View source on GitHubname: axolotl description: Expert guidance for fine-tuning LLMs with Axolotl - YAML configs, 100+ models, LoRA/QLoRA, DPO/KTO/ORPO/GRPO, multimodal support version: 1.0.0 author: Orchestra Research license: MIT tags: [Fine-Tuning, Axolotl, LLM, LoRA, QLoRA, DPO, KTO, ORPO, GRPO, YAML, HuggingFace, DeepSpeed, Multimodal] dependencies: [axolotl, torch, transformers, datasets, peft, accelerate, deepspeed]
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
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Trust signals
From repository metadata: license, adoption, age and documentation. Not a code audit — see the Safety scan above for what the skill file itself contains.
