text_to_lora

text_to_lora

Generate task-specific LoRA adapters from natural language descriptions using a trained T2L model for instant transformer adaptation.

Code repository

https://github.com/SakanaAI/text-to-lora

Use this as the implementation source: clone the repo and follow its README for install, dependencies, and how to run code or experiments. The generated client prints JSON with a suggested git clone command.

Primary resource (landing page)

https://openreview.net/forum?id=zWskCdu3QA

This is the paper or artifact home from DOI/registry metadata — not a JSON API. If this URL is arXiv, the generated client can still fetch live Atom metadata (title, abstract, authors) without a BASE_URL. For other hosts, the client uses stub mode until you set a real BASE_URL for a REST service.

What “running” this client does

The *_client.py script prints JSON that combines a GitHub repository (clone URL + suggested git clone) with optional paper context from arXiv (live Atom metadata when reference_url is arXiv). Run the real code by cloning the repo and following its README — the skill is your agent-facing entrypoint, not a substitute for the repo’s install steps.

To call a REST API instead, set BASE_URL in scripts/text_to_lora_client.py or wrap the upstream CLI with subprocess after clone.

How to run the method (from the source)

Extracted for operators and agents. Confirm against the upstream repository or paper before relying on it in production.

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10

• 16GB GPU memory (to run demo with both models simultaneously)

• uv package manager (see https://docs.astral.sh/uv/getting-started/installation/)
• Hugging Face account and CLI login for model access

Installation

git clone https://github.com/SakanaAI/text-to-lora.git
cd text-to-lora
uv self update
uv venv --python 3.10 --seed
uv sync
uv pip install https://github.com/Dao-AILab/flash-attention/releases/download/v2.6.3/flash_attn-2.6.3+cu123torch2.3cxx11abiFALSE-cp310-cp310-linux_x86_64.whl
uv pip install src/fishfarm

How to run

Download trained T2L checkpoints

Required before running any demo:

uv run huggingface-cli login
uv run huggingface-cli download SakanaAI/text-to-lora --local-dir . --include "trained_t2l/*"

Generate LoRA from task description

uv run python scripts/generate_lora.py trained_t2l/llama_8b_t2l "This task challenges your problem-solving abilities through mathematical reasoning. You must carefully read each scenario and systematically work through the data to compute the final outcome."

For smaller GPUs, use Gemma-2-2B:

uv run python scripts/generate_lora.py trained_t2l/gemma_2b_t2l "This task challenges your problem-solving abilities through mathematical reasoning. You must carefully read each scenario and systematically work through the data to compute the final outcome."

Evaluate generated LoRA

uv run python scripts/run_eval.py --model-dir meta-llama/Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct --lora-dirs {PATH_TO_GENERATED_LORA} --save-results --tasks gsm8k

Run Web UI demo

Runs Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2 locally alongside T2L:

uv run python webui/app.py

Evaluate T2L checkpoint

WANDB_MODE=disabled uv run python scripts/eval_hypermod_checkpoint.py --checkpoint_path trained_t2l/gemma_2b_t2l/hypermod.pt --full_eval --use-icl

Train T2L (SFT)

Start async evaluator in separate process:

uv run watcher.py

Then run training script (each ~5 days on H100):

./scripts/train_t2l_mistral.sh
./scripts/train_t2l_llama.sh
./scripts/train_t2l_gemma.sh

Train T2L (Reconstruction)

First train oracle LoRA baselines (takes many hours):

./scripts/train_lora_baselines.sh

Then train T2L to reconstruct:

WANDB_MODE=disabled uv run python scripts/train_hyper_recon.py configs/hyper_lora_decontam_lol_tasks.yaml --model_dir=mistralai/Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2/ --emb_model=Alibaba-NLP/gte-large-en-v1.5 --warmup_frac=0.1 --lr=1e-3 --epochs=10000 --n_train_ds=479 --exp_setup=hyper_lora --encoder_type=linear --pred_z_score=True --n_descs_per_ds=128 --n_embs_per_sampled_task=1 --n_tasks_per_batch=4 --factorized=False --delta_w_scaling=10000 --shared_AB_head=True

Configuration

• Hugging Face Auth: Run uv run huggingface-cli login before downloading models/datasets
• WANDB_MODE: Set WANDB_MODE=disabled to disable Weights & Biases logging
• Flash Attention wheel: The provided wheel is for CUDA 12.3 and torch 2.3. Adjust URL if your hardware differs.
• vLLM non-determinism: Known issue—evaluation runs may show small variance even with fixed seed due to vLLM's LoRA implementation
• Dataset connection issues: If Hugging Face datasets server rejects connections during SFT training, retry until datasets are cached locally

The same text lives in scripts/USAGE.md for tools that prefer reading files under scripts/.

Parameters

--api-key (str) [required] API key for authentication --t2l-directory (str) [required] Path to the trained T2L model directory (e.g., trained_t2l/llama_8b_t2l) --task-description (str) [required] Natural language description of the task for which to generate a LoRA adapter --model-dir (str) [optional, default=None] Base model directory for evaluation (e.g., meta-llama/Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct) --lora-dirs (str) [optional, default=None] Path to generated LoRA directory for evaluation --tasks (str) [optional, default=None] Comma-separated list of evaluation tasks (e.g., gsm8k) --save-results (bool) [optional, default=False] Save evaluation results to disk --use-icl (bool) [optional, default=False] Include 3-shot in-context examples in evaluation queries --checkpoint-path (str) [optional, default=None] Path to T2L hypermod checkpoint for evaluation

Usage

python3 scripts/text_to_lora_client.py uv run python scripts/generate_lora.py trained_t2l/llama_8b_t2l "This task challenges your problem-solving abilities through mathematical reasoning."

Example Output

{"lora_path": "/path/to/generated/lora", "model": "base_model_name"}