source docs/learning-progress.md · view on GitHub ↗

Learning Progress Tracker

This tracker makes the owner learning pipeline measurable. The goal is to learn from the ground up while using posttrainllm as the lab.

Status values:

Ground-Up Roadmap Progress

Canonical roadmap: learn/curriculum.md. Coverage index (every subsystem → anchor): learn/coverage-map.md.

All ten modules now have a polished session; remaining work is mastery, not authoring. Status is per-module learning state, not doc-existence.

#ModuleStatusEvidenceNext Concrete Action
1Functions, data, parametersreadingSession 1 exists and has self-checksPass mastery gate out loud; write checkpoint
2Loss and gradient descentreadingSession 2 exists and has worked examplesCompute one MSE + gradient step by hand
3Vectors, matrices, tensorsreadingSession 9 (tensors) written; anchors LoRA shape logicTrace one layer’s shapes; read a shape error and name the wrong axis
4Non-linear neural nets + backpropnot-startedSession 3 existsRun/inspect tiny non-linear example
5ML paradigms and scalingnot-startedSessions 4 and 5 existClassify posttrainllm attempts by paradigm
6Tokenization, embeddings, language modelingnot-startedSession 6 existsTokenize SQL prompts and inspect splits
7Attention and transformer blocksreadingSession 10 (attention) written; ties to interpretability heatmapWork one tiny Q/K/V attention example
8Training mechanicsnot-startedSession 8 existsInspect tiny overfit gate and failure symptoms
9Post-training: SFT, LoRA, preference tuningreadingSFT/LoRA/DPO docs and SQL run evidence existExplain SQL SFT win vs SimPO collapse
10Evals, rewards, self-improvementreadingSession 11 (evals/rewards) written; eval protocol, attempt ledger, SQL candidate-choice tools existBuild/inspect candidate-selection rows and report slice metrics

Factory Lab Progress

ModuleStatusEvidenceNext Concrete Action
Eval designappliedFrozen SQL gates, public-vs-synthetic distinction, slice metrics toolingAdd public Spider/BIRD execution gate when DBs are local
Data for post-trainingappliedSQL SFT rows, preference pairs, failure-derived rows, candidate-choice builderBuild candidate-selection train/eval rows from existing predictions
SFT + LoRA mechanicsappliedExpanded synthetic SFT worked; public v4 worked on public exact; LoRA geometry tooling existsRun controlled rank sweep only after next target is frozen
Preference tuningappliedHygiene SimPO collapsed and is documentedWrite/run reference-anchored DPO retry recipe
Verifiable rewardsreadingSQL execution and BFCL AST matching are understood as target reward surfacesTurn SQL candidate selection into a scored reward/data loop
RLVR / ReST / OAPLnot-startedBatch plan renderer exists; no model runStart only after candidate-selection evidence exists
Failure analysisappliedFailure taxonomy, trace review tooling, attempt ledgerAttach trace_review.md to every new SQL run
Public reportingappliedPublic artifacts registry, case-study template, publish-checkRe-render public SQL artifact with perf and public execution when available

Current Focus

The next project-lab focus is candidate selection for SQL:

  1. Why selection is easier than generation.
  2. How to build candidate sets without leakage.
  3. How to score candidate choices by execution/gold equivalence.
  4. How to decide whether selection skill transfers back to generation.

The next ground-up focus is Module 1 -> Module 2:

  1. Explain data vs parameters.
  2. Compute loss for bad and better guesses.
  3. Take one gradient-descent update.
  4. Connect that to why LoRA changes parameters rather than prompts.

Completion Criteria

A module reaches verified only when:

Reading alone is not enough.