Grpo Rlvr Training
Seth HobsonCommunityCreated by Seth Hobson
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Written by AutoGineer from the skill’s own files, not by the author
This skill provides a standardized recipe for using Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) to refine LLM reasoning on tasks with algorithmically checkable success criteria. It emphasizes the importance of verifiable rewards, manual inspection of reward functions, and specific hardware-aware configurations for training stability. The approach is designed for tasks where the model already demonstrates baseline capability but requires reinforcement to improve consistency and reasoning depth.
What it does
- Defines the GRPO training configuration using TRL's GRPOTrainer.
- Provides a framework for implementing composite reward functions (format and correctness).
- Establishes a mandatory inspection gate for reward functions before training.
- Offers guidance on hardware-specific memory management for GRPO rollouts.
- Outlines variant selection for specific failure modes like entropy collapse or MoE instability.
When to use it
- When task success is algorithmically verifiable (e.g., code, math, JSON schema).
- When the model already succeeds inconsistently and needs policy refinement.
- When you need to optimize reasoning traces rather than just output preferences.
- When a GRPO run exhibits specific issues like reward hacking or length-bias.
Advantages
- Enables policy refinement without requiring large datasets of human demonstrations.
- Provides a clear, repeatable recipe for verifiable task training.
- Includes a critical inspection gate to prevent training on flawed reward logic.
- Offers specific variants to address common RL training instabilities.
Usage examples
- “I have a model that solves math problems but is inconsistent. How do I use GRPO to improve it?”
- The agent provides the GRPOTrainer configuration, explains the requirement for a verifiable correctness reward function, and details the mandatory inspection process.
- “My GRPO training run is reward hacking by just increasing output length. What should I do?”
- The agent identifies this as a length-normalization bias and recommends switching to the Dr.GRPO variant to decouple reward from completion length.
Install
Download the skill as a ZIP:
https://mp-staging.autogineer.com/agent-skills/wshobson/grpo-rlvr-training/downloadUnzip it into the cross-client skills folder of your project:
mkdir -p .agents/skills && unzip grpo-rlvr-training.zip -d .agents/skills
Documentation by Seth Hobson
GRPO & RLVR Training
This skill assumes finetuning-method-selection
already routed here because the target behavior
has a verifiable pass/fail signal — not
demonstrations (lora-qlora-recipes) or
preference pairs (preference-optimization).
What follows is when RL is the right tool, the
reference recipe, the mandatory reward-inspection
gate, and how to pick a GRPO variant when the
base recipe misbehaves.
Input: a routing decision (RLVR via GRPO)
plus a verifier (code executor, test suite,
schema checker, or grader) for the target task.
Output format: a validated GRPO config — the
kwarg values in references/grpo-memory.md and
the reward functions in
references/reward-functions.md, not free-form
advice — that llm-finetuning-training-engineer
consumes directly.
When RL Applies
GRPO+RLVR only pays off when task success is
algorithmically checkable — a unit test
passes, a parser accepts the output, a tool call
matches an expected schema, a math answer matches
a ground truth. If grading the output requires
human judgment or a subjective rubric, that's an
eval-harness and judge-calibration problem first
— see eval-harness-first — not a reason to skip
straight to RL.
Before opening a GRPO run, confirm the model can sometimes succeed on the target task already. RL sharpens an existing capability by reweighting toward the samples that already work; it does not install a capability from zero.
The model never succeeds, even at low temperature across many samples: the gap is format or task understanding, not policy refinement. Route back to SFT first (
lora-qlora-recipes) and only return to this skill once the base success rate is nonzero.The model succeeds sometimes, inconsistently: this is the GRPO sweet spot — proceed to The Recipe below.
The standing rule for the whole plugin: DPO for
taste, GRPO for reasoning. If the signal is a
preference between two acceptable outputs, that's
preference-optimization, not this skill.
The Recipe
The reference recipe is TRL's GRPOTrainer with
vLLM-backed generation:
from trl import GRPOConfig, GRPOTrainer
grpo_args = GRPOConfig(
output_dir="./outputs-grpo",
use_vllm=True,
vllm_mode="colocate", # single GPU; "server" for multi-GPU
num_generations=8, # floor — fewer starves the group-relative baseline
learning_rate=5e-7, # settled range for GRPO
beta=0.01, # KL coefficient vs the reference policy
per_device_train_batch_size=8,
gradient_accumulation_steps=4,
bf16=True,
logging_steps=10,
seed=3407,
)
trainer = GRPOTrainer(
model=SFT_CHECKPOINT,
args=grpo_args,
reward_funcs=[format_reward, correctness_reward], # references/reward-functions.md
train_dataset=prompts, # prompt-only — GRPO generates its own completions
processing_class=tokenizer,
)
trainer.train()vllm_mode="colocate"runs generation and training on the same GPU — the default for a single-GPU box.vllm_mode="server"points at a separate vLLM server process and is the multi-GPU path — generation and training don't compete for the same device.num_generations≥ 8 is a floor, not a suggestion: GRPO's advantage estimate is relative to the group mean, and fewer than 8 samples per prompt produces a noisy baseline.Reward is composite — a format reward (did the output parse / match the required structure) plus a correctness reward (did the answer verify). A well-formed-but-wrong answer and a malformed one should not score identically; correctness alone loses that signal.
learning_rate=5e-7andbeta=0.01are the settled starting point; deviate only after the base run is stable and reward-inspected (below).
Memory sizing for this recipe by target size
class: references/grpo-memory.md.
The Inspection Rule
Run the reward function against 50–100 sampled outputs and manually read the results before starting the actual training run. This is a gate, not a one-time sanity check.
If the reward function's judgment disagrees with a human reading of that sample, fix the reward function first. Training against an uninspected reward, or tuning hyperparameters to compensate for one silently scoring the wrong thing, is how a run reward-hacks: the model optimizes cleanly toward the wrong target, and that doesn't surface as a training-loop bug.
This inspection is a Phase 1 gate input for
/finetune — the same 50–100-sample read that
catches a broken reward function here is what that
command checks for before it lets a GRPO brief
proceed.
Complete reward function implementations to
inspect against — exact-match, schema-validation,
unit-test-execution, a length-penalty wrapper, and
a rubric-as-reward judge pattern:
references/reward-functions.md.
Variant Selection
The base recipe above is the default. Reach for a variant only when a specific failure mode shows up, not preemptively:
| Failure mode | Variant | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Entropy collapse / degenerate long chain-of-thought | DAPO | Decouples clip bounds and relaxes the KL penalty that over-regularizes exploration on long reasoning traces |
| Reward or output length trends up regardless of quality | Dr.GRPO | Removes GRPO's length-normalization bias so reward tracks correctness, not completion length |
| Training a mixture-of-experts model | GSPO | Moves the importance-sampling ratio to the sequence level instead of per-token — per-token ratios are unstable on MoE routing, so GSPO is required here, not optional |
Start with plain GRPO. Watch for the specific symptom — collapsing entropy on long CoT, a length-reward correlation, or MoE instability — and only then swap in the matching variant above. Don't pre-select a variant before the base recipe has actually shown the failure mode.
VLM RL Is Reference-Only
Vision-language RL is not executed by this plugin in v1 — it's documented here for context, not as a runnable path. Tooling is fragmented across ms-swift and EasyR1-derived forks with no one-line TRL command yet, and naive text-only GRPO applied to a VLM tends to reward-hack by optimizing the text-reasoning trace while ignoring the image — the model learns to sound right without looking at the input. A VLM RL run is a research spike outside this skill's supported recipe, not a variant of The Recipe above.
References
references/reward-functions.md— complete Python reward functions (exact-match correctness, schema validation, unit-test execution, a length-penalty wrapper, and a rubric-as-reward judge pattern) to inspect under The Inspection Rule before any training run.references/grpo-memory.md— memory sizing by target size class, vLLM sleep-mode and optimizer-state tactics, Unsloth's long-context RL chunking, and the DGX Spark bandwidth caveat for decode-heavy rollouts.
Related skills: finetuning-method-selection
routes here once a verifiable pass/fail signal
exists; preference-optimization is the sibling
skill for preference pairs rather than verifiable
rewards; eval-harness-first covers judge
calibration for any reward that isn't purely
code-checkable. On DGX Spark, defer to the
dgx-spark-ops plugin's skills, when installed,
for the memory/thermal remediation ladder this
skill's memory table doesn't cover.
Files
- ATTRIBUTION.mdAdded by AutoGineer982 B
- LICENSELicence file added by AutoGineer1.0 KiB
- SKILL.md7.6 KiB
- references/grpo-memory.md3.5 KiB
- references/reward-functions.md11.5 KiB
references/reward-functions.md
Last verified: 2026-07-13
GRPO Reward Function Library
Complete, runnable reward functions for TRL's
GRPOTrainer. Every function here follows the
current TRL reward-function signature: it accepts
completions plus any extra dataset columns as
keyword arguments, and returns a list[float] the
same length as completions. Base models are never
named here — SFT_CHECKPOINT/JUDGE_MODEL are
placeholders; see finetuning-method-selection's
references/model-catalog.md for actual
checkpoints.
These examples assume the standard (string)
completion format — completions: list[str] — and
call .strip(), json.loads(), .split(), etc.
directly on each completion. TRL's conversational
dataset format instead passes each completion as
[{"role": "assistant", "content": "..."}]; on that
format, extract completion[0]["content"] before
applying any of the string operations below, in
every function in this file.
Before wiring any of these into a training run,
inspect them against 50–100 sampled outputs by
hand — this is SKILL.md's Inspection Rule, not
optional. A reward function that looks correct in
isolation can still disagree with human judgment
on real model outputs.
Format Reward
Checks structural compliance — did the completion follow the required response shape at all — as a prerequisite to grading correctness:
import re
def format_reward(completions, **kwargs) -> list[float]:
"""1.0 if the completion has a <reasoning>...</reasoning>
block followed by an <answer>...</answer> block, else 0.0.
This is a gate, not the correctness signal — a
well-formed wrong answer still scores 0 on
correctness_reward below.
"""
pattern = re.compile(
r"^<reasoning>.*?</reasoning>\s*<answer>.*?</answer>$",
re.DOTALL,
)
return [1.0 if pattern.match(c.strip()) else 0.0 for c in completions]Correctness Reward — Exact Match
The baseline verifiable-answer reward, for tasks with a single ground-truth string (math final answers, closed-form lookups):
def correctness_reward(completions, answer, **kwargs) -> list[float]:
"""`answer` is the ground-truth column from the
training dataset, aligned index-for-index with
`completions`. Extracts the <answer> block from
format_reward's expected shape and compares.
"""
rewards = []
for completion, gold in zip(completions, answer):
match = re.search(r"<answer>(.*?)</answer>", completion, re.DOTALL)
predicted = match.group(1).strip() if match else None
rewards.append(2.0 if predicted == gold.strip() else 0.0)
return rewardsCorrectness Reward — Schema Validation
For structured-output and tool-call tasks, where "correct" means "conforms to the required JSON schema," not string equality:
import json
from jsonschema import validate, ValidationError
def schema_reward(completions, output_schema, **kwargs) -> list[float]:
"""`output_schema` is a JSON Schema dict, either a
single constant schema for the whole batch or a
per-example list the same length as `completions`.
Rewards valid, schema-conformant JSON; 0.0 for
anything that doesn't parse or doesn't validate.
"""
if isinstance(output_schema, dict):
# Constant case: one schema dict for every completion —
# zip()-ing a bare dict would iterate its keys instead,
# not the schema itself, so normalize first.
schemas = [output_schema] * len(completions)
else:
schemas = list(output_schema)
if len(schemas) != len(completions):
raise ValueError(
f"schema_reward: {len(schemas)} schemas for "
f"{len(completions)} completions"
)
rewards = []
for completion, schema in zip(completions, schemas):
try:
parsed = json.loads(completion)
validate(instance=parsed, schema=schema)
rewards.append(1.0)
except (json.JSONDecodeError, ValidationError):
rewards.append(0.0)
return rewardsCorrectness Reward — Unit Test Execution
For code-generation tasks, where "correct" means
the generated function passes a held-out test
suite. Execute in a subprocess with a hard
timeout — never exec() untrusted completions
in-process.
WARNING — this function executes model-generated
code and REQUIRES an isolated environment: a
network-disabled container, gVisor/firejail, or a
dedicated CI sandbox, with no secrets or
credentials in the environment — no HF tokens,
experiment-tracker keys, cloud credentials, or SSH
keys. GRPO will, by design, push adversarial
completions through this path as the policy
explores. Never run it directly on a training host
holding credentials. The timeout below protects
training-loop liveness only — it is NOT a
security boundary. Likewise, TemporaryDirectory
confines where the harness writes its files, not
what the executed code can read or reach. The
function below enforces this: it takes the sandbox
boundary as a required argument and refuses to run
at all — returning reward 0.0 — when the caller
doesn't supply one. It never falls back to host
execution.
import logging
import subprocess
import tempfile
from pathlib import Path
logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
def test_execution_reward(
completions, test_code, sandbox_cmd, timeout_s=10, **kwargs
) -> list[float]:
"""`test_code` is a per-example pytest snippet that
imports the candidate under a fixed module name
and asserts expected behavior. Runs each candidate
in its own subprocess with a wall-clock timeout;
an infinite loop or crash scores 0.0 instead of
hanging the training loop.
SECURITY: executes model-generated code. This
function REQUIRES an isolation boundary — it does
not run anything on the host by itself.
`sandbox_cmd` (list[str], required) is a command
prefix that wraps pytest in that boundary, e.g. a
network-disabled, resource-capped Docker container:
# sandbox_cmd = [
# "docker", "run", "--rm", "--network=none",
# "--memory=1g", "--cpus=1",
# "-v", f"{workdir}:/work:ro", "-w", "/work",
# "python:3.12-slim",
# ]
If `sandbox_cmd` is falsy, this function refuses to
execute anything and returns 0.0 for every
completion — it never falls back to running
pytest on the host. The subprocess environment is
scrubbed to a minimal PATH (no HF tokens,
experiment-tracker keys, cloud credentials, or SSH
keys). The timeout is a liveness guard for the
training loop, NOT a security boundary — isolation
comes entirely from `sandbox_cmd`; the temporary
directory only confines harness writes, not what
executed code can read or reach.
"""
if not sandbox_cmd:
logger.warning(
"test_execution_reward: no sandbox boundary provided "
"— refusing to execute model-generated code"
)
return [0.0 for _ in completions]
scrubbed_env = {"PATH": "/usr/bin:/bin"}
rewards = []
for completion, tests in zip(completions, test_code):
with tempfile.TemporaryDirectory() as tmp:
candidate_path = Path(tmp) / "candidate.py"
test_path = Path(tmp) / "test_candidate.py"
candidate_path.write_text(completion)
test_path.write_text(tests)
try:
result = subprocess.run(
[*sandbox_cmd, "python", "-m", "pytest",
str(test_path), "-q"],
cwd=tmp,
capture_output=True,
timeout=timeout_s,
env=scrubbed_env,
)
rewards.append(1.0 if result.returncode == 0 else 0.0)
except subprocess.TimeoutExpired:
rewards.append(0.0)
return rewardsLength-Penalty Wrapper
Wraps any reward function above to discourage runaway completion length without replacing the underlying correctness signal — use when a correctness-only reward starts trending toward longer, padded outputs:
def with_length_penalty(reward_fn, target_len=512, penalty_per_token=0.001):
"""Returns a new reward function that subtracts a
small per-token penalty for every token past
`target_len`, applied on top of `reward_fn`'s
output. Penalty is capped so it can't drive an
otherwise-correct reward negative — it discourages
padding without overriding correctness.
"""
def wrapped(completions, **kwargs) -> list[float]:
base_rewards = reward_fn(completions, **kwargs)
adjusted = []
for reward, completion in zip(base_rewards, completions):
overflow = max(0, len(completion.split()) - target_len)
penalty = min(reward, overflow * penalty_per_token)
adjusted.append(reward - penalty)
return adjusted
return wrappedNote that len(completion.split()) counts words
as a cheap proxy for tokens — use the model's own
tokenizer for true token counts when tuning
target_len.
This is a targeted fix for observed length
creep, not a substitute for Dr.GRPO — if length
bias is systemic rather than an occasional
overflow, route to the Dr.GRPO variant in
SKILL.md's Variant Selection instead of stacking
penalty wrappers.
Rubric-as-Reward Judge Pattern
For tasks where correctness isn't code-checkable but the pass/fail line is still crisp enough for a judge to apply consistently — e.g., "did the response follow the requested format and stay on-topic" rather than "is this a good essay." Binary pass/fail, not a Likert score:
TRL calls reward functions with completions plus
whatever dataset columns the trainer was given, via
**kwargs — it does not inject arbitrary objects
like a judge client. Bind judge_client and the
fixed rubric in a closure before handing the
result to GRPOTrainer(reward_funcs=[...]), rather
than declaring them as parameters TRL is expected to
supply:
def make_rubric_judge_reward(judge_client, rubric):
"""`judge_client` calls JUDGE_MODEL — a model from a
*different* model family than the model under
training, never the model being trained or a
same-family relative of it. `rubric` is a fixed
pass/fail criterion string, not a free-form
quality prompt, so both are bound here rather than
read from TRL-supplied per-example kwargs. Returns a
reward function matching TRL's actual signature.
"""
def rubric_judge_reward(completions, prompts, **kwargs) -> list[float]:
"""Returns 1.0/0.0 per completion, never an
intermediate score."""
rewards = []
for prompt, completion in zip(prompts, completions):
verdict = judge_client.judge(
rubric=rubric,
prompt=prompt,
response=completion,
output_format="pass_fail", # binary only — no Likert scale
)
rewards.append(1.0 if verdict == "pass" else 0.0)
return rewards
return rubric_judge_rewardCalibration is a hard prerequisite, not a
nice-to-have. An uncalibrated judge is a
noisier, more expensive version of the exact-match
reward above — before wiring rubric_judge_reward
into a GRPO run, the judge must be calibrated
against human labels (train/dev/sealed-test
splits, TPR/TNR reported, judge pinned to a fixed
snapshot). That calibration workflow lives in
eval-harness-first; do not skip it because the
rubric "looks obviously right" — the same
plugin-wide judge-calibration prerequisite applies
here as everywhere else a judge grades a reward.
Requirements and compatibility
Works with: Claude Code, Claude apps, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Kiro, OpenCode, Goose, Amp, Roo Code, JetBrains Junie, Factory Droid, Devin (ex-Windsurf), Mistral Vibe, OpenHands, Letta
“Works with” means the tool reads the open Agent Skills format; a skill written for one tool may use features others lack.
Needs: Needs Python
Security
No issues found by our static scan· No issues found
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Attribution and licence
- Created by
- Seth Hobson
- Publisher
- Seth Hobson (Community)
- Source
- wshobson/agents · plugins/llm-finetuning/skills/grpo-rlvr-training · commit 4bde316
- Licence
- MIT License (redistribution allowed)
- LICENSE (added by AutoGineer from LICENSE)
- ATTRIBUTION.md (written by AutoGineer)
- Synced
AutoGineer is not affiliated with or endorsed by Seth Hobson.
Download ZIP
The ZIP holds the skill’s files, its licence files and an ATTRIBUTION.md. Download grpo-rlvr-training.zip