Definition
Plain language
The extra rounds of training that turn a finished base model into something useful and well-behaved, after the big initial training on raw text.
As stated in the literature
The stages applied after pretraining — supervised fine-tuning, RLHF, instruction tuning, and related methods — that adapt a base language model into an assistant or specialist; where alignment and most behavioral shaping happen.
Also called: post-trained, post-train
Why it matters: It is where most of a model's helpfulness, manners, and safety come from, so it largely determines how the finished assistant behaves.
For example, post-training is the stage that turns a raw text-predictor into a chatbot that politely answers questions and refuses harmful requests.
Heard on the show
“The Assistant's point of view, the "I," only shows up in the workspace after post-training.”Episode 203 — The Thought a Model Doesn't Say — and the Lens That Reads It