What the term really means
Additional model training on prepared examples to change its behaviour or specialise it.
How it works in practice
Fine-tuning is useful when desired behaviour can be demonstrated through many strong examples and prompting or retrieval is not enough.
The decision to make before implementation
Data quality is the central task: contradictory answers, wrong labels and a narrow set can reinforce unwanted behaviour.
How to verify that it works
Compare evals, cost, stability, out-of-domain behaviour and whether a simpler method achieves the same result before and after tuning. Compare results with an agreed baseline and review routine cases, difficult exceptions and human hand-offs separately. A practical Fine Tuning test should have an owner, a review date and a recorded example of an outcome the team will not accept.
The PAR HOUSE Agency approach
We approach Fine Tuning from the workflow rather than a tool demonstration. Data quality is the central task: contradictory answers, wrong labels and a narrow set can reinforce unwanted behaviour. We then build a small measurable scope, record assumptions and expand only after quality review.
