slime-rl-training

Files (3)

• SKILL.md
• api-reference.md · references/
• troubleshooting.md · references/

SKILL.md (first lines)

# slime: LLM Post-Training Framework for RL Scaling

slime is an LLM post-training framework from Tsinghua's THUDM team, powering GLM-4.5, GLM-4.6, and GLM-4.7. It connects Megatron-LM for training with SGLang for high-throughput rollout generation.

## When to Use slime

**Choose slime when you need:**
- Megatron-LM native training with SGLang inference
- Custom data generation workflows with flexible data buffers
- Training GLM, Qwen3, DeepSeek V3, or Llama 3 models
- Research-grade framework with production backing (Z.ai)

**Consider alternatives when:**
- You need enterprise-grade stability features → use **miles**
- You want flexible backend swapping → use **verl**
- You need PyTorch-native abstractions → use **torchforge**

## Key Features

- **Training**: Megatron-LM with full parallelism support (TP, PP, DP, SP)
- **Rollout**: SGLang-based high-throughput generation with router
- **Data Buffer**: Flexible prompt management and sample storage
- **Models**: GLM-4.x, Qwen3, DeepSeek V3/R1, Llama 3

## Architecture Overview

```
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    Data Buffer                          │
│ - Prompt initialization and management                  │
│ - Custom data generation and filtering                  │
│ - Rollout sample storage                                │
└─────────────┬───────────────────────────┬───────────────┘
              │                           │
┌─────────────▼───────────┐ ┌─────────────▼───────────────┐
│ Training (Megatron-LM)  │ │ Rollout (SGLang + Router)   │
│ - Actor model training  │ │ - Response generation       │
│ - Critic (optional)     │ │ - Reward/verifier output    │
│ - Weight sync to rollout│ │ - Multi-turn support        │
└─────────────────────────┘ └─────────────────────────────┘
```

## Installation

```bash
# Recommended: Docker
docker pull slimerl/slime:latest
docker run --rm --gpus all --ipc=host --shm-size=16g \
  -it slimerl/slime:latest /bin/bash

# Inside container
cd /root/slime && pip install -e . --no-deps
```

### From Source

```bash
git clone https://github.com/THUDM/slime.git
cd slime
pip install -r requirements.txt
pip install -e .
```

## Quick Start: GRPO Training

```bash
# Source model configuration
source scripts/models/qwen3-4B.sh

# Launch training
python train.py \
    --actor-num-nodes 1 \
    --actor-num-gpus-per-node 4 \
    --rollout-num-gpus 4 \
    --advantage-estimator grpo \
    --use-kl-loss --kl-loss-coef 0.001 \
    --rollout-batch-size 32 \
    --n-samples-per-prompt 8 \
    --global-batch-size 256 \
    --num-rollout 3000 \
    --prompt-data /path/to/data.jsonl \
    ${MODEL_ARGS[@]} ${CKPT_ARGS[@]}
```

---

## Workflow 1: Standard GRPO Training

Use this workflow for training reasoning models with group-relative advantages.

### Prerequisites Checklist
- [ ] Docker environment or Megatron-LM + SGLang installed
- [ ] Model checkpoint (HuggingFace or Megatron format)
- [ ] Training data in JSONL format

### Step 1: Prepare Data

```python
# data.jsonl format
{"prompt": "What is 2 + 2?", "label": "4"}
{"prompt": "Solve: 3x = 12", "label": "x = 4"}
```

Or with chat format:
```python
{
    "prompt": [
        {"role": "system", "content": "You are a math tutor."},
        {"role": "user", "content": "What is 15 + 27?"}
    ],
    "label": "42"
}
```

### Step 2: Configure Model

Choose a pre-configured model script:

```bash

From Tommy-yw/RunbookHermes, MIT.

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