Fine-tuning a 350M Model for Better Structured Outputs in 100 GRPO Steps

Explain Like I'm Normal

Hugging Face researchers demonstrated that the Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) technique used by DeepSeek-R1 can be applied to a tiny 350M parameter model. With just 100 training steps, the model significantly improved its ability to generate valid JSON and follow complex formatting constraints. This proves that high-end reasoning and structure capabilities aren't just for trillion-parameter behemoths.