Large Language Model Recipes: A Hands-On Guide to Fine-Tuning, Optimization, Deployment, and Real-World Applications

The Large Language Model Recipes book is a comprehensive, practical guide designed to help developers, data scientists, and AI engineers navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of Large Language Models (LLMs). Moving beyond theory, this book provides a hands-on, recipe-based approach to mastering the entire LLMs lifecycle, from selecting the right open-source model to fine-tuning it on custom data and deploying it for production at scale. Starting with the fundamentals of setting up a robust development environment, the book guides you through the critical decisions of model selection (Llama, Mistral, Falcon) and data preparation. It offers deep dives into advanced training techniques, including full fine-tuning, instruction tuning, and parameter-efficient methods like LoRA and QLoRA that make training accessible on consumer hardware. The book doesn't stop at training. It tackles the crucial "last mile" of AI development: deployment and optimization. You will learn how to shrink models with quantization, serve them with high-throughput engines like vLLM and TGI, and evaluate their performance using industry-standard benchmarks. Finally, it explores cutting-edge frontiers, including Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) for grounding models in real-time data, building multimodal vision-language applications, and designing autonomous AI agents. Whether you are building a specialized chatbot, a code assistant, or a complex reasoning agent, this book provides the tested recipes and code you need to develop efficient, scalable, and robust AI solutions today. What you will learn:

Design production-ready LLM systems using the Feature/Training/Inference (FTI) framework Apply advanced fine-tuning methods, including LoRA and QLoRA, for efficient model adaptation Build and optimize RAG pipelines with effective retrieval strategies and vector databases Deploy optimized LLMs using quantization techniques and scalable inference frameworks Develop multimodal and agentic AI applications with vision-language models and autonomous agents

Who this book is for:

This book is ideal for software developers, machine learning engineers, data scientists, and technical researchers who want to move beyond using API endpoints and start

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Apress
Published: 06/11/2026
ISBN: 9798868826061