The art and science of hyperparameter optimization on Amazon Nova Forge

Fine-tuning for domain-specific tasks means improving performance in one area without degrading the model’s general capabilities, and getting that balance right is harder than it looks. This post walks through how to navigate that balance, from selecting the right customization strategy for your data and task, to configuring the training parameters that most influence outcomes, like learning rate, batch size, and checkpointing.

We also cover the common mistakes that lead to wasted training runs and how to catch them early, so you can improve domain performance without degrading general capabilities or burning through compute on avoidable failures. By the end, you will know how to improve domain performance without degrading general capabilities and how to avoid the expensive failures that come from getting the balance wrong.