Introduction: Fine-tuning adapts pre-trained language models to specific tasks, domains, or behaviors. While prompting works for many use cases, fine-tuning delivers better performance, lower latency, and reduced costs for specialized applications. This guide covers modern fine-tuning approaches: full fine-tuning for maximum customization, LoRA and QLoRA for efficient parameter updates, preparing high-quality training data, using OpenAI […]
Read more →Category: Technology Engineering
Technology Engineering
Building Production AI Applications with .NET 8 and C# 12
When .NET 8 and C# 12 were released, I was skeptical. After 15 years building enterprise applications, I’d seen framework updates come and go. But this release changed everything for AI development. Let me show you how to build production AI applications with .NET 8 and C# 12—using actual C# code, not Python wrappers. Figure […]
Read more →LLM Output Formatting: JSON Mode, Pydantic Parsing, and Template-Based Outputs
Introduction: LLM outputs are inherently unstructured text, but applications need structured data—JSON objects, typed responses, specific formats. Getting reliable structured output requires careful prompt engineering, output parsing, validation, and error recovery. This guide covers practical output formatting techniques: JSON mode and structured outputs, Pydantic-based parsing, format enforcement with retries, template-based formatting, and strategies for handling […]
Read more →Building LLM Agents with Tools: From Simple Loops to Production Systems
Introduction: LLM agents extend language models beyond text generation into autonomous action. By connecting LLMs to tools—web search, code execution, APIs, databases—agents can gather information, perform calculations, and interact with external systems. This guide covers building tool-using agents from scratch: defining tools with schemas, implementing the reasoning loop, handling tool execution, managing conversation state, and […]
Read more →Prompt Template Management: Engineering Discipline for LLM Prompts
Introduction: Prompts are the interface between your application and LLMs. As applications grow, managing prompts becomes challenging—they’re scattered across code, hard to version, and difficult to test. A prompt template system brings order to this chaos. It separates prompt logic from application code, enables versioning and A/B testing, and makes prompts reusable across different contexts. […]
Read more →LLM Observability: Tracing, Metrics, and Logging for Production AI
Introduction: Observability is essential for production LLM applications—you need visibility into latency, token usage, costs, error rates, and output quality. Unlike traditional applications where you can rely on status codes and response times, LLM applications require tracking prompt versions, model behavior, and semantic quality metrics. This guide covers practical observability: distributed tracing for multi-step LLM […]
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