easylora 0.2.1

Batteries-included toolkit for LoRA / QLoRA fine-tuning with Hugging Face Transformers

easylora

Batteries-included toolkit for LoRA / QLoRA fine-tuning with Hugging Face Transformers.

Fine-tune any causal language model with LoRA in under 20 lines of Python, or with a single CLI command.

What is LoRA / QLoRA?

LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation) freezes pre-trained model weights and injects small trainable rank-decomposition matrices, reducing trainable parameters by orders of magnitude.

QLoRA adds 4-bit quantisation on top of LoRA, enabling fine-tuning of large models on consumer GPUs.

easylora wraps transformers + peft with safe defaults, reproducibility, and a clean config-driven API.

Installation

pip install easylora

Optional extras:

pip install "easylora[qlora]"   # adds bitsandbytes for 4-bit/8-bit quantisation
pip install "easylora[wandb]"   # adds Weights & Biases logging
pip install "easylora[dev]"     # adds ruff, pyright, pytest, mkdocs, pre-commit
pip install "easylora[all]"     # everything

For development from source:

git clone https://github.com/alexsuw/easylora.git
cd easylora
pip install -e ".[dev]"

Quickstart (Python)

from easylora import train, TrainConfig
from easylora.config import ModelConfig, DataConfig

config = TrainConfig(
    model=ModelConfig(base_model="meta-llama/Llama-3.2-1B"),
    data=DataConfig(
        dataset_name="tatsu-lab/alpaca",
        format="alpaca",
        max_seq_len=2048,
    ),
)
artifacts = train(config)
print(f"Adapter saved to: {artifacts.adapter_dir}")

QLoRA (4-bit)

config = TrainConfig(
    model=ModelConfig(base_model="meta-llama/Llama-3.2-1B", load_in_4bit=True),
    data=DataConfig(dataset_name="tatsu-lab/alpaca", format="alpaca"),
)
artifacts = train(config)

Quickstart (CLI)

# Generate a starter config
easylora init-config --template sft-lora

# Train
easylora train --config easylora_config.yaml

# Train with autopilot (no config file)
easylora train \
  --autopilot \
  --model meta-llama/Llama-3.2-1B \
  --dataset tatsu-lab/alpaca

# Validate config without training
easylora train --config config.yaml --dry-run

# Plan autopilot choices without training
easylora autopilot plan \
  --model meta-llama/Llama-3.2-1B \
  --dataset tatsu-lab/alpaca \
  --quality balanced

# Evaluate
easylora eval --base-model meta-llama/Llama-3.2-1B --adapter-dir ./output/adapter --dataset eval.jsonl

# Merge adapter into base model
easylora merge --base-model meta-llama/Llama-3.2-1B --adapter-dir ./output/adapter --output-dir ./merged

# Check environment
easylora doctor

Config Reference

Config files use YAML or JSON. See the full reference.

model:
  base_model: "meta-llama/Llama-3.2-1B"
  torch_dtype: "auto"
data:
  dataset_name: "tatsu-lab/alpaca"
  format: "alpaca"
  max_seq_len: 2048
lora:
  r: 16
  alpha: 32
  target_modules: "auto"
training:
  epochs: 3
  batch_size: 4
  grad_accum: 4
  gradient_checkpointing: true
output:
  output_dir: "./output"
repro:
  seed: 42

Autopilot Training

Autopilot generates a full TrainConfig from minimal inputs, then runs the existing training pipeline unchanged.

from easylora import autopilot_plan, autopilot_train

plan = autopilot_plan(
    model="meta-llama/Llama-3.2-1B",
    dataset="tatsu-lab/alpaca",
    quality="balanced",  # fast | balanced | high
)
print(plan.to_pretty_lines())

artifacts = autopilot_train(
    model="meta-llama/Llama-3.2-1B",
    dataset="tatsu-lab/alpaca",
)

When autopilot is used, easylora also saves:

• resolved_config.yaml — full resolved configuration used for training
• autopilot_report.json — hardware profile, dataset/model analysis, chosen values, and reasoning

Model Compatibility

easylora auto-detects LoRA target modules for 16+ architectures:

Family	Models
LLaMA	LLaMA 1/2/3, Code Llama, Vicuna
Mistral	Mistral, Mixtral
Qwen	Qwen, Qwen2
Google	Gemma, Gemma 2
Microsoft	Phi-2, Phi-3
Others	Falcon, GPT-NeoX, Pythia, MPT, Bloom, OPT, GPT-2, StarCoder

For unknown architectures, easylora scans the model for nn.Linear layers and selects attention-like modules automatically. Use easylora inspect-targets --model <id> to preview what would be selected.

Merging Adapters

from easylora import merge_adapter

merge_adapter(
    base_model_name_or_path="meta-llama/Llama-3.2-1B",
    adapter_dir="./output/adapter",
    output_dir="./merged_model",
)

The merged model loads with AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained without PEFT.

Dataset Formats

Format	Columns	Description
raw	text	Single text field for language modelling
alpaca	instruction, input (optional), output	Instruction-following with prompt masking
chatml	messages	Chat messages with role/content dicts

Output Artifacts

output/
  adapter/           # LoRA adapter weights
  train_config.json  # Config used for this run
  train_log.jsonl    # Step-by-step training metrics
  summary.json       # Final loss, steps, runtime
  metadata.json      # Base model, versions, timestamp
  logs.jsonl         # Application logs

Troubleshooting

Issue	Solution
bitsandbytes not installed	pip install bitsandbytes (CUDA required)
CUDA OOM	Reduce batch_size, increase grad_accum, enable gradient_checkpointing, use QLoRA
pad_token was None	Handled automatically (set to eos_token)
Output dir exists	Use --force or allow_overwrite: true

Run easylora doctor for environment diagnostics.

Running Tests

pip install -e ".[dev]"
make test          # fast tests
make test-slow     # includes smoke training

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for dev setup, code style, and the PR process.

License

Apache-2.0