Summary of Using Hugging Face for Specialized Models and Fine-Tuning

Using Hugging Face for Specialized Models and Fine-Tuning

Navigate the Hugging Face ecosystem, fine-tune text models, and deploy real demos on Spaces.

Skill Level: Beginner

General

Announcements

Orientation to the Hugging Face Ecosystem

Overview: Orientation to the Hugging Face Ecosystem

Big Picture: What the Hugging Face Ecosystem Includes

Activity: Map the Ecosystem Components to Real Tasks

Accounts, Organizations, and Basic Hub Navigation

Activity: Tour the Hugging Face Hub Interface

Reading Model, Dataset, and Space Pages as Catalog Entries

Activity: Model Card and Dataset Page Deep Dive

Licenses, Intended Use, and Risk Awareness

How This Course Maps onto the Ecosystem

Judgment and Collaboration in the Hugging Face Context

Exercise: Section Exercise: Build Your First Ecosystem Map and Safe-Use Checklist

Review: Orientation to the Hugging Face Ecosystem

Working with Pipelines for Text, Vision, and Audio Tasks

Overview: Working with Pipelines for Text, Vision, and Audio Tasks

What Hugging Face Pipelines Do and When to Use Them

Activity: Run Your First Text Pipeline in a Notebook

Text Pipelines: Sentiment, QA, Summarization, and Translation

Activity: Compare Text Pipelines Across Tasks

Vision Pipelines: Classifying and Describing Images

Activity: Run an Image Classification Pipeline

Audio Pipelines: Speech-to-Text with Whisper

Activity: Transcribe a Short Audio Clip

Judging Pipeline Outputs and Knowing When to Go Beyond Pipelines

Connecting Pipelines to the Rest of the Hugging Face Workflow

Exercise: Section Exercise: Build a Mini Multi-Modal Pipeline Notebook

Review: Working with Pipelines for Text, Vision, and Audio Tasks

Model Selection and Evaluation for Specialized Use Cases

Overview: Model Selection and Evaluation for Specialized Use Cases

From Use Case to Model Requirements

Activity: Turn a Plain-Language Need into a Model Spec

Reading Model Cards: Architecture, Data, Metrics, and Risks

Activity: Model Card Deep Dive on the Hugging Face Hub

Licenses, Intended Use, and Compliance Basics

Designing Simple Evaluation Setups

Activity: Plan a Mini Evaluation for Your Use Case

Comparing Candidate Models and Making a Choice

Activity: Rank Three Candidate Models Against Your Spec

Collaborative Documentation and Communication of Model Choices

Exercise: Section Exercise -- End-to-End Model Selection and Evaluation Plan

Review: Model Selection and Evaluation for Specialized Use Cases

Fine-Tuning Small Text Models on Custom Datasets

Overview: Fine-Tuning Small Text Models on Custom Datasets

What Fine-Tuning Actually Does (and When to Use It)

Activity: Compare Zero-Shot vs Fine-Tuned Behavior on a Simple Task

Choosing a Small Text Model and Custom Dataset

Activity: Select a Small Model and Outline a Matching Dataset

Preparing and Tokenizing Custom Text Datasets

Activity: Tokenize a Small Sample Dataset for Classification

Configuring Trainer for Low-Resource Fine-Tuning

Activity: Design Trainer Settings for a Colab-Friendly Run

Using PEFT and LoRA for Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning

Activity: Decide When to Add LoRA and Map the Integration Steps

Evaluating, Saving, and Pushing Fine-Tuned Models

Exercise: Section Exercise: Plan an End-to-End Fine-Tuning Run and Evaluation

Review: Fine-Tuning Small Text Models on Custom Datasets

Building and Deploying Interactive Demos on Hugging Face Spaces

Overview: Building and Deploying Interactive Demos on Hugging Face Spaces

What Hugging Face Spaces Are and When to Use Them

Activity: Identify Good vs. Weak Spaces Demos

Setting Up a Basic Gradio App for Text Models

Activity: Create a Local Gradio Demo with a Transformers Pipeline

Creating and Configuring a New Hugging Face Space

Activity: Initialize a Gradio-based Space

Managing Dependencies, Hardware, and Secrets in Spaces

Activity: Fix a Broken Space Build (Thought Exercise)

Evaluating Demo Behavior and Handling Errors Gracefully

Activity: Design Better Error Messages and Loading States

Connecting Spaces to Fine-Tuned Models and Iterating

Judgment and Collaboration: Sharing Your Demo Responsibly

Exercise: Section Exercise: Deploy a Simple Text Demo to Hugging Face Spaces

Review: Building and Deploying Interactive Demos on Hugging Face Spaces

Collaborating with AI Tools and Reflecting on Model Behavior

Overview: Collaborating with AI Tools and Reflecting on Model Behavior

What Collaboration with Hugging Face Models Really Means

Activity: Map the Human-Model Split of Responsibilities

Iterating with Pipelines: Prompting, Inputs, and Output Review

Activity: Iterate on a Text Generation Pipeline and Critique Outputs