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Choosing and Tuning

Which model should this task use? Answer the eligibility gates first, compare families by what they're built for, run your own small bake-off — and only climb the prompt → examples → RAG → fine-tune ladder when the rung below fails.

flowchart LR J["Junior: gates + family fit"] --> M["Middle: bake-offs + the ladder"] M --> S["Senior: fine-tuning for real"] S --> P["Professional: multi-model strategy"]

Levels

Level Guide You are done when
Junior Gates and family fit You can run the eligibility checklist and match a task to a model family by design intent.
Middle Bake-offs and the ladder You can run a small comparison on your own cases and know when each ladder rung is justified.
Senior Fine-tuning for real You can judge when fine-tuning is right, prepare its data, and measure success with the right metrics.
Professional Multi-model strategy You can set a model strategy that limits lock-in and handles new releases and retirements.

Practice rule

Leaderboard deltas are not evidence for your task. Ten real cases from your own data, graded against your own bar, beat any public benchmark comparison.