Technique Registry

Technique Registry

This directory is the canonical place for post-training tactics that may improve posttrainllm factory runs.

The rest of the roadmap tracks products, PRDs, and run artifacts. This registry tracks the smaller unit that actually changes model quality:

method -> recipe -> experiment -> result -> next recipe

Definitions

• Method: a general technique, such as SFT, DPO, GRPO/RLVR, LoRA, constrained decoding, routing, or evaluation.
• Recipe: a concrete way to apply a method to one target, with data shape, reward, hyperparameters, eval slices, failure mode, and stop rule.
• Experiment: one frozen run of one recipe.
• Result: worked, failed, regressed, or inconclusive, with numbers.

See method-vs-recipe.md for the distinction.

Active Files

• method-vs-recipe.md — vocabulary and examples.
• audit-inventory.md — row-level treatment of the broad audit_2026.md technique audit.
• sql-technique-backlog.md — SQL-specific method, recipe, status, and next-test ledger.
• trainloop-teardown.md — techniques extracted from TrainLoop case studies and how they map to posttrainllm.
• ../external-products-reviewed.md — cross-project ledger of products, papers, and techniques reviewed.
• ../attempt-ledger.md — global worked/failed attempt history.

Rules

Before a new post-training run:

1. Pick a target and frozen eval.
2. Select one recipe from the target’s technique backlog.
3. Record why that recipe should address the current failure mode.
4. Define the smallest test and ship/reject threshold.
5. Make sure the run can produce the factory evidence: eval-baseline.json, eval-candidate.json, slice-metrics.json, trace_review.md, report.md, and decision.json.

Do not treat a method name as a plan. “Try DPO” is not a recipe.