Techniques

Fine-tuning

Training a pre-trained AI model on your specific data to make it better at your exact use case without building from scratch.

What is Fine-tuning?

Fine-tuning is taking an existing AI model and training it further on your own data to make it perform better for your specific task.

Instead of training a model from zero (expensive, slow, needs tons of data), you start with something like GPT-4 or Llama that already understands language, then teach it your domain-specific patterns.

Most builders fine-tune when they need consistent formatting, specific tone, or domain expertise that prompting alone can't nail. Common with customer support bots, code generation for specific frameworks, or content that needs to match your brand voice exactly.

Costs vary widely. OpenAI charges per training token plus higher inference costs. Open-source models like Llama let you fine-tune for free if you have the compute.

Good to Know

Adapts pre-trained models to your specific use case with less data than training from scratch
Works by continuing training on a base model using your domain-specific dataset
Best for consistent formatting, specific tone, or deep domain knowledge that prompts can't achieve
Costs range from free (open-source models) to per-token pricing (OpenAI, Anthropic)
Can freeze early layers and only train later ones to save compute and prevent overfitting

How Vibe Coders Use Fine-tuning

1
Training a support bot to answer questions using your product docs and past tickets
2
Getting code suggestions that match your team's specific coding patterns and internal libraries
3
Creating content that nails your brand voice instead of sounding generically AI
4
Building a legal document analyzer that understands your firm's specific contract language

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Terms

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)

A technique that lets AI models search your documents or databases before answering, combining real-time data retrieval with text generation.

Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA)

A technique for fine-tuning AI models by training only a small set of additional parameters instead of the entire model.

Stable Diffusion

Open-source AI model that generates images from text prompts, released by Stability AI in 2022.

Llama

Meta's open-source family of large language models you can download, customize, and run without API costs or vendor lock-in.

ChatGPT

OpenAI's conversational AI that can write, code, analyze data, and help you build faster through natural language prompts.

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