Fine-Tuning vs Prompt Engineering vs RAG: Pick the Right Tool
Fine-tuning, prompt engineering, and RAG solve different problems. Learn which approach fits your use case, when each one fails, and a practical decision tree for choosing the right tool.
Fine-tuning, prompt engineering, and RAG solve different problems. Learn which approach fits your use case, when each one fails, and a practical decision tree for choosing the right tool.
Fine-tuning an LLM for production use is not straightforward—and it often fails silently. This guide covers the complete pipeline from dataset preparation through deployment, including when fine-tuning actually solves your problem, how to prepare data correctly, choosing between managed and self-hosted approaches, training setup with realistic hyperparameters, evaluation metrics that matter, and deployment patterns that scale.