MCPInstall

peft-fine-tuning

Parameter-efficient fine-tuning for LLMs using LoRA, QLoRA, and 25+ methods. Use when fine-tuning large models (7B-70B) with limited GPU memory, when you need to train <1% of parameters with minimal accuracy loss, or for multi-adapter serving. HuggingFace's official library integrated with transformers ecosystem.

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Install

Works with every agent the skills CLI supports.

npx skills add https://github.com/orchestra-research/ai-research-skills --skill peft-fine-tuning
  1. 01

    Install

    Run the command in your project. The CLI asks which agents to install for.

  2. 02

    Describe the task

    Ask your agent for something this skill covers. It loads peft-fine-tuning automatically when relevant.

  3. 03

    Review the result

    The agent follows the SKILL.md steps, scripts and references bundled with the skill.

SKILL.md

The instructions your agent reads when the skill is triggered.

PEFT (Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning)

Fine-tune LLMs by training <1% of parameters using LoRA, QLoRA, and 25+ adapter methods.

When to use PEFT

Use PEFT/LoRA when:

  • Fine-tuning 7B-70B models on consumer GPUs (RTX 4090, A100)
  • Need to train <1% parameters (6MB adapters vs 14GB full model)
  • Want fast iteration with multiple task-specific adapters
  • Deploying multiple fine-tuned variants from one base model

Use QLoRA (PEFT + quantization) when:

  • Fine-tuning 70B models on single 24GB GPU
  • Memory is the primary constraint
  • Can accept ~5% quality trade-off vs full fine-tuning

Use full fine-tuning instead when:

  • Training small models (<1B parameters)
  • Need maximum quality and have compute budget
  • Significant domain shift requires updating all weights

Quick start

Installation

# Basic installation
pip install peft

# With quantization support (recommended)
pip install peft bitsandbytes

# Full stack
pip install peft transformers accelerate bitsandbytes datasets

LoRA fine-tuning (standard)

from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer, TrainingArguments, Trainer
from peft import get_peft_model, LoraConfig, TaskType
from datasets import load_dataset

# Load base model
model_name = "meta-llama/Llama-3.1-8B"
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(model_name, torch_dtype="auto", device_map="auto")
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_name)
tokenizer.pad_token = tokenizer.eos_token

# LoRA configuration
lora_config = LoraConfig(
    task_type=TaskType.CAUSAL_LM,
    r=16,                          # Rank (8-64, higher = more capacity)
    lora_alpha=32,                 # Scaling factor (typically 2*r)
    lora_dropout=0.05,             # Dropout for regularization
    target_modules=["q_proj", "v_proj", "k_proj", "o_proj"],  # Attention layers
    bias="none"                    # Don't train biases
)

# Apply LoRA
model = get_peft_model(model, lora_config)
model.print_trainable_parameters()
# Output: trainable params: 13,631,488 || all params: 8,043,307,008 || trainable%: 0.17%

# Prepare dataset
dataset = load_dataset("databricks/databricks-dolly-15k", split="train")

def tokenize(example):
    text = f"### Instruction:\n{example['instruction']}\n\n### Response:\n{example['response']}"
    return tokenizer(text, truncation=True, max_length=512, padding="max_length")

tokenized = dataset.map(tokenize, remove_columns=dataset.column_names)

# Training
training_args = TrainingArguments(
    output_dir="./lora-llama",
    num_train_epochs=3,
    per_device_train_batch_size=4,
    gradient_accumulation_steps=4,
    learning_rate=2e-4,
    fp16=True,
    logging_steps=10,
    save_strategy="epoch"
)

trainer = Trainer(
    model=model,
    args=training_args,
    train_dataset=tokenized,
    data_collator=lambda data: {"input_ids": torch.stack([f["input_ids"] for f in data]),
                                 "attention_mask": torch.stack([f["attention_mask"] for f in data]),
                                 "labels": torch.stack([f["input_ids"] for f in data])}
)

trainer.train()

# Save adapter only (6MB vs 16GB)
model.save_pretrained("./lora-llama-adapter")

QLoRA fine-tuning (memory-efficient)

from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, BitsAndBytesConfig
from peft import get_peft_model, LoraConfig, prepare_model_for_kbit_training

# 4-bit quantization config
bnb_config = BitsAndBytesConfig(
    load_in_4bit=True,
    bnb_4bit_quant_type="nf4",           # NormalFloat4 (best for LLMs)
    bnb_4bit_compute_dtype="bfloat16",   # Compute in bf16
    bnb_4bit_use_double_quant=True       # Nested quantization
)

# Load quantized model
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
    "meta-llama/Llama-3.1-70B",
    quantization_config=bnb_config,
    device_map="auto"
)

# Prepare for training (enables gradient checkpointing)
model = prepare_model_for_kbit_training(model)

# LoRA config for QLoRA
lora_config = LoraConfig(
    r=64,                              # Higher rank for 70B
    lora_alpha=128,
    lora_dropout=0.1,
    target_modules=["q_proj", "v_proj", "k_proj", "o_proj", "gate_proj", "up_proj", "down_proj"],
    bias="none",
    task_type="CAUSAL_LM"
)

model = get_peft_model(model, lora_config)
# 70B model now fits on single 24GB GPU!

LoRA parameter selection

Rank (r) - capacity vs efficiency

RankTrainable ParamsMemoryQualityUse Case
4~3MMinimalLowerSimple tasks, prototyping
8~7MLowGoodRecommended starting point
16~14MMediumBetterGeneral fine-tuning
32~27MHigherHighComplex tasks
64~54MHighHighestDomain adaptation, 70B models

Alpha (lora_alpha) - scaling factor

# Rule of thumb: alpha = 2 * rank
LoraConfig(r=16, lora_alpha=32)  # Standard
LoraConfig(r=16, lora_alpha=16)  # Conservative (lower learning rate effect)
LoraConfig(r=16, lora_alpha=64)  # Aggressive (higher learning rate effect)

Target modules by architecture

# Llama / Mistral / Qwen
target_modules = ["q_proj", "v_proj", "k_proj", "o_proj", "gate_proj", "up_proj", "down_proj"]

# GPT-2 / GPT-Neo
target_modules = ["c_attn", "c_proj", "c_fc"]

# Falcon
target_modules = ["query_key_value", "dense", "dense_h_to_4h", "dense_4h_to_h"]

# BLOOM
target_modules = ["query_key_value", "dense", "dense_h_to_4h", "dense_4h_to_h"]

# Auto-detect all linear layers
target_modules = "all-linear"  # PEFT 0.6.0+

Loading and merging adapters

Load trained adapter

from peft import PeftModel, AutoPeftModelForCausalLM
from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM

# Option 1: Load with PeftModel
base_model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained("meta-llama/Llama-3.1-8B")
model = PeftModel.from_pretrained(base_model, "./lora-llama-adapter")

# Option 2: Load directly (recommended)
model = AutoPeftModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
    "./lora-llama-adapter",
    device_map="auto"
)

Merge adapter into base model

# Merge for deployment (no adapter overhead)
merged_model = model.merge_and_unload()

# Save merged model
merged_model.save_pretrained("./llama-merged")
tokenizer.save_pretrained("./llama-merged")

# Push to Hub
merged_model.push_to_hub("username/llama-finetuned")

Multi-adapter serving

from peft import PeftModel

# Load base with first adapter
model = AutoPeftModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained("./adapter-task1")

# Load additional adapters
model.load_adapter("./adapter-task2", adapter_name="task2")
model.load_adapter("./adapter-task3", adapter_name="task3")

# Switch between adapters at runtime
model.set_adapter("task1")  # Use task1 adapter
output1 = model.generate(**inputs)

model.set_adapter("task2")  # Switch to task2
output2 = model.generate(**inputs)

# Disable adapters (use base model)
with model.disable_adapter():
    base_output = model.generate(**inputs)

PEFT methods comparison

MethodTrainable %MemorySpeedBest For
LoRA0.1-1%LowFastGeneral fine-tuning
QLoRA0.1-1%Very LowMediumMemory-constrained
AdaLoRA0.1-1%LowMediumAutomatic rank selection
IA30.01%MinimalFastestFew-shot adaptation
Prefix Tuning0.1%LowMediumGeneration control
Prompt Tuning0.001%MinimalFastSimple task adaptation
P-Tuning v20.1%LowMediumNLU tasks

IA3 (minimal parameters)

from peft import IA3Config

ia3_config = IA3Config(
    target_modules=["q_proj", "v_proj", "k_proj", "down_proj"],
    feedforward_modules=["down_proj"]
)
model = get_peft_model(model, ia3_config)
# Trains only 0.01% of parameters!

Prefix Tuning

from peft import PrefixTuningConfig

prefix_config = PrefixTuningConfig(
    task_type="CAUSAL_LM",
    num_virtual_tokens=20,      # Prepended tokens
    prefix_projection=True       # Use MLP projection
)
model = get_peft_model(model, prefix_config)

Integration patterns

With TRL (SFTTrainer)

from trl import SFTTrainer, SFTConfig
from peft import LoraConfig

lora_config = LoraConfig(r=16, lora_alpha=32, target_modules="all-linear")

trainer = SFTTrainer(
    model=model,
    args=SFTConfig(output_dir="./output", max_seq_length=512),
    train_dataset=dataset,
    peft_config=lora_config,  # Pass LoRA config directly
)
trainer.train()

With Axolotl (YAML config)

# axolotl config.yaml
adapter: lora
lora_r: 16
lora_alpha: 32
lora_dropout: 0.05
lora_target_modules:
  - q_proj
  - v_proj
  - k_proj
  - o_proj
lora_target_linear: true  # Target all linear layers

With vLLM (inference)

from vllm import LLM
from vllm.lora.request import LoRARequest

# Load base model with LoRA support
llm = LLM(model="meta-llama/Llama-3.1-8B", enable_lora=True)

# Serve with adapter
outputs = llm.generate(
    prompts,
    lora_request=LoRARequest("adapter1", 1, "./lora-adapter")
)

Performance benchmarks

Memory usage (Llama 3.1 8B)

MethodGPU MemoryTrainable Params
Full fine-tuning60+ GB8B (100%)
LoRA r=1618 GB14M (0.17%)
QLoRA r=166 GB14M (0.17%)
IA316 GB800K (0.01%)

Training speed (A100 80GB)

MethodTokens/secvs Full FT
Full FT2,5001x
LoRA3,2001.3x
QLoRA2,1000.84x

Quality (MMLU benchmark)

ModelFull FTLoRAQLoRA
Llama 2-7B45.344.844.1
Llama 2-13B54.854.253.5

Common issues

CUDA OOM during training

# Solution 1: Enable gradient checkpointing
model.gradient_checkpointing_enable()

# Solution 2: Reduce batch size + increase accumulation
TrainingArguments(
    per_device_train_batch_size=1,
    gradient_accumulation_steps=16
)

# Solution 3: Use QLoRA
from transformers import BitsAndBytesConfig
bnb_config = BitsAndBytesConfig(load_in_4bit=True, bnb_4bit_quant_type="nf4")

Adapter not applying

# Verify adapter is active
print(model.active_adapters)  # Should show adapter name

# Check trainable parameters
model.print_trainable_parameters()

# Ensure model in training mode
model.train()

Quality degradation

# Increase rank
LoraConfig(r=32, lora_alpha=64)

# Target more modules
target_modules = "all-linear"

# Use more training data and epochs
TrainingArguments(num_train_epochs=5)

# Lower learning rate
TrainingArguments(learning_rate=1e-4)

Best practices

  1. Start with r=8-16, increase if quality insufficient
  2. Use alpha = 2 * rank as starting point
  3. Target attention + MLP layers for best quality/efficiency
  4. Enable gradient checkpointing for memory savings
  5. Save adapters frequently (small files, easy rollback)
  6. Evaluate on held-out data before merging
  7. Use QLoRA for 70B+ models on consumer hardware

References

  • Advanced Usage - DoRA, LoftQ, rank stabilization, custom modules
  • Troubleshooting - Common errors, debugging, optimization

Resources

FAQ

What does the peft-fine-tuning skill do?

Parameter-efficient fine-tuning for LLMs using LoRA, QLoRA, and 25+ methods. Use when fine-tuning large models (7B-70B) with limited GPU memory, when you need to train <1% of parameters with minimal accuracy loss, or for multi-adapter serving. HuggingFace's official library integrated with transformers ecosystem.

How do I install peft-fine-tuning?

Run npx skills add https://github.com/orchestra-research/ai-research-skills --skill peft-fine-tuning in your project. The skills CLI detects the agents you use and copies the skill into the right folder. For Claude Code you can also place the skill folder at ~/.claude/skills/peft-fine-tuning/ (personal) or .claude/skills/peft-fine-tuning/ (project).

Which AI agents can use peft-fine-tuning?

Any agent that supports the open Agent Skills format (a folder with a SKILL.md file), including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, Windsurf, Cline, OpenCode and more.

Is peft-fine-tuning safe to install?

No partner security audit is available yet. Skills can run commands and scripts, so read the SKILL.md and any bundled files before installing.

Who maintains peft-fine-tuning?

It is published by orchestra-research in orchestra-research/ai-research-skills. It has 1,013 recorded installs.

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