---
title: "The Smol Training Playbook:<br/> The Secrets to Building World-Class LLMs"
subtitle: "A practical journey through the challenges, decisions, and messy reality behind training state-of-the-art language models"
description: "The Smol Training Playbook: The Secrets to Building World-Class LLMs"
authors:
  - name: "Loubna Ben Allal"
    url: "https://huggingface.co/loubnabnl"
    affiliations: [1]
  - name: "Lewis Tunstall"
    url: "https://huggingface.co/lewtun"
    affiliations: [1]
  - name: "Nouamane Tazi"
    url: "https://huggingface.co/nouamanetazi"
    affiliations: [1]
  - name: "Elie Bakouch"
    url: "https://huggingface.co/eliebak"
    affiliations: [1]
  - name: "Ed Beeching"
    url: "https://huggingface.co/edbeeching"
    affiliations: [1]
  - name: "Carlos Miguel Patiño"
    url: "https://huggingface.co/cmpatino"
    affiliations: [1]
  - name: "Clémentine Fourrier"
    url: "https://huggingface.co/clefourrier"
    affiliations: [1]
  - name: "Thibaud Frere"
    url: "https://huggingface.co/tfrere"
    affiliations: [1]
  - name: "Anton Lozhkov"
    url: "https://huggingface.co/anton-l"
    affiliations: [1]
  - name: "Colin Raffel"
    url: "https://huggingface.co/craffel"
    affiliations: [1]
  - name: "Leandro von Werra"
    url: "https://huggingface.co/lvwerra"
    affiliations: [1]
  - name: "Thomas Wolf"
    url: "https://huggingface.co/thomwolf"
    affiliations: [1]
affiliations:
  - name: "Hugging Face"
    url: "https://huggingface.co"
published: "Oct. 30, 2025"
tags:
  - research-article-template
  - scientific paper
  - data visualization
tableOfContentsAutoCollapse: true
seoThumbImage: "/thumb.png"
pdfProOnly: false
---