DataChef: Cooking Up Optimal Data Recipes for LLM Adaptation via Reinforcement Learning

Fuente: arXiv
Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Chen, Yicheng, Ma, Zerun, Xie, Xinchen, Li, Yining, Chen, Kai
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866911492061790208
author Chen, Yicheng
Ma, Zerun
Xie, Xinchen
Li, Yining
Chen, Kai
author_facet Chen, Yicheng
Ma, Zerun
Xie, Xinchen
Li, Yining
Chen, Kai
contents In the current landscape of Large Language Models (LLMs), the curation of large-scale, high-quality training data is a primary driver of model performance. A key lever is the \emph{data recipe}, which comprises a data processing pipeline to transform raw sources into training corpora. Despite the growing use of LLMs to automate individual data processing steps, such as data synthesis and filtering, the overall design of data recipes remains largely manual and labor-intensive, requiring substantial human expertise and iteration. To bridge this gap, we formulate \emph{end-to-end data recipe generation} for LLM adaptation. Given a target benchmark and a pool of available data sources, a model is required to output a complete data recipe that adapts a base LLM to the target task. We present DataChef-32B, which performs online reinforcement learning using a proxy reward that predicts downstream performance for candidate recipes. Across six held-out tasks, DataChef-32B produces recipes that yield performance comparable to those curated by human experts. Notably, the recipe from DataChef-32B adapts Qwen3-1.7B-Base to the math domain, achieving 66.7 on AIME'25 and surpassing the official post-training checkpoint (Qwen3-1.7B). This work sheds new light on automating LLM training and developing self-evolving AI systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_11089
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle DataChef: Cooking Up Optimal Data Recipes for LLM Adaptation via Reinforcement Learning
Chen, Yicheng
Ma, Zerun
Xie, Xinchen
Li, Yining
Chen, Kai
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
In the current landscape of Large Language Models (LLMs), the curation of large-scale, high-quality training data is a primary driver of model performance. A key lever is the \emph{data recipe}, which comprises a data processing pipeline to transform raw sources into training corpora. Despite the growing use of LLMs to automate individual data processing steps, such as data synthesis and filtering, the overall design of data recipes remains largely manual and labor-intensive, requiring substantial human expertise and iteration. To bridge this gap, we formulate \emph{end-to-end data recipe generation} for LLM adaptation. Given a target benchmark and a pool of available data sources, a model is required to output a complete data recipe that adapts a base LLM to the target task. We present DataChef-32B, which performs online reinforcement learning using a proxy reward that predicts downstream performance for candidate recipes. Across six held-out tasks, DataChef-32B produces recipes that yield performance comparable to those curated by human experts. Notably, the recipe from DataChef-32B adapts Qwen3-1.7B-Base to the math domain, achieving 66.7 on AIME'25 and surpassing the official post-training checkpoint (Qwen3-1.7B). This work sheds new light on automating LLM training and developing self-evolving AI systems.
title DataChef: Cooking Up Optimal Data Recipes for LLM Adaptation via Reinforcement Learning
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.11089