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Aligning LLMs to be helpful, honest, harmless, and huggy (H4)

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sergiopaniego 
posted an update about 19 hours ago
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LFM2.5-2.6B just dropped!

and the @liquidai blog comes with some nice details about the training procedure, so let's analyze it.

basically, a full agent training pipeline but compressed into 2.6B

base model → SFT → specialized teachers per domain (SFT + RLVR) → on-policy distillation back into one student → agentic RL

the two most interesting stages

→ MOPD: the student generates, each prompt routes to its domain teacher for token-level feedback. teachers branch from the same SFT checkpoint, so their signal stays close to the student's distribution

→ agentic RL: multi-turn GRPO inside real harnesses (OpenClaw, Hermes Agent), one sandbox per rollout, a proxy captures token-level trajectories while the harness stays a black box

this makes a 2.6B that beats much larger models on instruction following and tool use

SFT, distillation, RL, RL envs: exactly what we're covering in our Training Agents livestream series (next one coming soon!)

→ model: LiquidAI/LFM2.5-2.6B
→ blog: https://www.liquid.ai/blog/lfm2-5-2-6b
→ live series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLo2EIpI_JMQvQZm-kVlz4wY1vWF0LBcf5
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sergiopaniego 
posted an update 6 days ago
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Simon Willison (@simonw ) has asked every new model to draw a pelican riding a bicycle for some time now

you look at the drawing and you know. but there is no number, so nothing can train against it, no?

I turned this idea into an rl env in OpenEnv. now, you can eval any model against it, and train against it with TRL

read the details!🤓

https://huggingface.co/blog/sergiopaniego/pelican-env-openenv
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sergiopaniego 
posted an update 7 days ago
sergiopaniego 
posted an update 9 days ago
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quick reminder! 🚨

tomorrow (Tuesday, July 28), we're back with Class 3 of the Training Agents live series

🧠 what: reinforcement learning for training agents (GRPO): how it works, how to implement it in TRL, and end-to-end examples
🗓️ when: Tuesday, July 28 - 🕔 5:00 PM CEST / 8:30 PM IST
📍 where: Live on @huggingface 's X, YouTube, and LinkedIn

live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztdTed5egrM

class 1: https://x.com/SergioPaniego/status/2069382207618379813
class 2: https://x.com/SergioPaniego/status/2075180665184686187
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sergiopaniego 
posted an update 12 days ago
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you can now train your own coding agents with trl + openenv, starting with opencode

we just added end-to-end support for training agent harnesses:

> TRL: a loop-owning training path (AsyncGRPOTrainer + HarnessRolloutWorker) that launches the agent in an OpenEnv session, reads back its trace, reconstructs the training samples, and trains with AsyncGRPO
> OpenEnv: the OpenCode harness environment plus a transparent proxy that forwards the agent's model calls and records each turn's token ids and logprobs

you train the actual opencode agent as is, it runs its own loop and tools and the policy learns from the exact tokens it produced

we're shipping a self-contained example: local subprocess sandbox, DeepCoder problems, validated on Qwen3-8B.

> example: https://github.com/huggingface/trl/blob/main/examples/scripts/openenv/opencode.py
> docs: https://huggingface.co/docs/trl/main/openenv

and we're working actively on both sides so expect more 🤓
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sergiopaniego 
posted an update 13 days ago
sergiopaniego 
posted an update 14 days ago
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join us next Tuesday, July 28, for Class 3 of the Training Agents live series!

we'll dive into reinforcement learning for agent training, covering the intuition behind GRPO, how it works, and how to implement it in TRL with practical, e2e examples

see you there 🤠

live: https://www.youtube.com/live/ztdTed5egrM

> in case you missed class 1:
https://x.com/SergioPaniego/status/2069382207618379813
> and in case you missed class 2: https://x.com/SergioPaniego/status/2075180665184686187
sergiopaniego 
posted an update 28 days ago
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Frontier models use distillation as a step of their post-training pipelines.

In 2026 it has three jobs: compress a big model into a small one, merge RL experts into a single model, and let a model teach itself.

I wrote up which frontier models use each one and how: https://huggingface.co/blog/sergiopaniego/distillation-2026

It pairs with Class 2 of the Training an Agent series Ben and I are doing, where we teach these techniques hands-on with TRL!
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albertvillanova 
posted an update about 1 month ago
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🎉 KTO is now part of the stable TRL API

As of Promote KTO to stable API, KTOTrainer and KTOConfig have graduated from trl.experimental to the stable trl API. https://github.com/huggingface/trl/pull/6175

This one closes out a long road. Over the past 6+ months, the "Align KTO with DPO" effort landed ~90 PRs methodically bringing KTO up to the standard we hold for stable trainers, one carefully-scoped change at a time:
- Feature parity with DPO: full VLM support (incl. multi-image), sync_ref_model, PEFT + Liger, ZeRO-3 + PEFT dtype fix, pad_to_multiple_of, activation offloading, IterableDataset and dict eval_dataset, remove_unused_columns, and reference-logprob precomputation at init.
- Consistency with DPO: aligned method order and signatures, tokenization, _prepare_dataset, PEFT handling, ref-model preparation for distributed training, and config layout — plus a new DataCollatorForKTO and output format. Metrics moved into _compute_loss and simplified to direct averages via the shared _metrics attribute.
- Removing legacy baggage: dropped encoder-decoder support, BOS/EOS handling, null_ref_context, generate_during_eval, model_init, preprocess_logits_for_metrics, model/ref adapter names, and several dead config knobs.
- Coverage: a full test suite mirroring DPO, text collator tests, VLM tests, and slow tests.
- The promotion itself: the experimental → stable move (#6175) and shim cleanup (#6287), handled so downstream users get a clean deprecation path.

Honestly, this has been one of the more complex tasks I've taken on since joining the team, not because any single change was hard, but because it demanded sustained consistency across a ~2,000-line trainer, with every branch, comment, and edge case kept in lockstep with DPO.

Huge thanks to everyone who reviewed along the way (especially @qgallouedec ), the incremental review cadence is exactly what kept this maintainable.

KTO now sits on equal footing with our other flagship trainers. 🚀
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abidlabs 
posted an update about 1 month ago
sergiopaniego 
posted an update about 1 month ago
sergiopaniego 
posted an update about 2 months ago
sergiopaniego 
posted an update about 2 months ago
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GLM-5.2 is open and comes with competitive performance against opus 4.8

day-0 in transformers + vllm + sglang, mit license 🤗

on the post-training side: critic-based ppo for variable-length agentic rollouts (ppo is back!) + an online anti-reward-hacking module that feeds the agent dummy info when it tries to cheat
sergiopaniego 
posted an update about 2 months ago
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OpenEnv has a new home: github.com/huggingface/OpenEnv

Starting today, it's coordinated by a committee that includes Meta-PyTorch, Reflection, Unsloth, Modal, Prime Intellect, Nvidia, Mercor, Fleet AI, and Hugging Face

frontier labs train their models and their harnesses together. Claude knows Claude Code. GPT-5.5 knows Codex. that's not an accident, it's training. open-source models deserve the same magic, but pulling that off requires infrastructure that belongs to everyone, not one lab

OpenEnv is that layer. one api, any harness, any trainer, any environment

Rewards and training loops stay in TRL, Unsloth, wherever you already work. OpenEnv is the socket they all plug into

Get involved!

Full announcement: https://huggingface.co/blog/openenv-agentic-rl