Educational GPT implementation in ~300 lines. Reproduces GPT-2 (124M) on OpenWebText. Clean, hackable code for learning transformers. By Andrej Karpathy. Perfect for understanding GPT architecture from scratch. Train on Shakespeare (CPU) or OpenWebText (multi-GPU).
implementing-llms-litgpt
implementing-llms-litgpt is an open-source productivity skill for Claude Code and compatible agents, published by Orchestra-Research. Its author describes it as: “Implements and trains LLMs using Lightning AI's LitGPT with 20+ pretrained architectures (Llama, Gemma, Phi, Qwen, Mistral). Use when need clean model implementations, educational understanding of architectures, or pr…”. The project has 12k stars on GitHub and is available under the MIT license. Add it to your setup with `/plugin marketplace add Orchestra-Research/AI-Research-SKILLs`.
What implementing-llms-litgpt does
LitGPT provides 20+ pretrained LLM implementations with clean, readable code and production-ready training workflows.
Installation
Add implementing-llms-litgpt to your agent with:
/plugin marketplace add Orchestra-Research/AI-Research-SKILLs Always review a skill's source before installing it. This command comes from the skill's public repository; the linked repo is the source of truth for exact setup steps.
What's inside
The SKILL.md for implementing-llms-litgpt is organised into these sections:
- Quick start
- Common workflows
- Workflow 1: Fine-tune on custom dataset
- Workflow 2: LoRA fine-tuning on single GPU
- Workflow 3: Pretrain from scratch
- Workflow 4: Convert and deploy model
- When to use vs alternatives
- Common issues
- Advanced topics
- Hardware requirements
- Resources
When to use it
Reach for implementing-llms-litgpt when you want productivity help from your agent without writing the same instructions every session. Load the skill and the agent picks it up automatically for relevant tasks.
Strengths
- Clear MIT license — safe to read and adapt
- Ships in Orchestra-Research/AI-Research-SKILLs, an established project with 11,807 GitHub stars
- Actively maintained (recent commits)
Topics
Frequently asked questions
- What does implementing-llms-litgpt do?
- Implements and trains LLMs using Lightning AI's LitGPT with 20+ pretrained architectures (Llama, Gemma, Phi, Qwen, Mistral). Use when need clean model implementations, educational understanding of architectures, or production fine-tuning with LoRA/QLoRA. Single-file implementations, no abstraction layers.
- How do I install implementing-llms-litgpt?
- Run /plugin marketplace add Orchestra-Research/AI-Research-SKILLs in your agent, then reload your skills. Review the source at https://github.com/Orchestra-Research/AI-Research-SKILLs before installing.
- Is implementing-llms-litgpt free to use?
- Yes. implementing-llms-litgpt is free and open source under the MIT license, so you can read, run, and adapt it within that license's terms.
- Where does implementing-llms-litgpt come from?
- implementing-llms-litgpt ships inside Orchestra-Research/AI-Research-SKILLs, a repository that contains 41 catalogued skills in total. The repository's 11,807 GitHub stars apply to that whole collection, not to this skill on its own.
Related skills
More Productivity →State-space model with O(n) complexity vs Transformers' O(n²). 5× faster inference, million-token sequences, no KV cache. Selective SSM with hardware-aware design. Mamba-1 (d_state=16) and Mamba-2 (d_state=128, multi-head). Models 130M-2.8B on HuggingFace.
RNN+Transformer hybrid with O(n) inference. Linear time, infinite context, no KV cache. Train like GPT (parallel), infer like RNN (sequential). Linux Foundation AI project. Production at Windows, Office, NeMo. RWKV-7 (March 2025). Models up to 14B parameters.
Fine-tune LLMs using reinforcement learning with TRL - SFT for instruction tuning, DPO for preference alignment, PPO/GRPO for reward optimization, and reward model training. Use when need RLHF, align model with preferences, or train from human feedback. Works with HuggingFace Transformers.
Orchestrates end-to-end autonomous AI research projects using a two-loop architecture. The inner loop runs rapid experiment iterations with clear optimization targets. The outer loop synthesizes results, identifies patterns, and steers research direction. Routes to domain-specific skills for execution, supports continuous agent operation via Claude Code /loop and OpenClaw heartbeat, and produces research presentations and papers. Use when starting a research project, running autonomous experiments, or managing a multi-hypothesis research effort.