Feat: add ministral3 (#3297)

* feat: add ministral and mistral3

* chore: lint

* feat: update cce for ministral

* fix: add vram usage

* feat: update for release

* fix: save_pretrained issue in v5

* fix: add instructions to use v5 branch

* fix: add to multipack

* fix: improve instructions

* fix: add model to readme

README.md

@@ -29,7 +29,7 @@
 
 ## 🎉 Latest Updates
 
-- 2025/11: Axolotl now includes support for [Olmo3](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/blob/main/examples/olmo3).
+- 2025/12: Axolotl now includes support for [Olmo3](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/blob/main/examples/olmo3), [Trinity](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/tree/main/examples/trinity), and [Ministral3](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/blob/main/examples/ministral).
 - 2025/10: New model support has been added in Axolotl for: [Qwen3 Next](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/blob/main/examples/qwen3-next), [Qwen2.5-vl, Qwen3-vl](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/tree/main/examples/qwen2_5-vl), [Qwen3, Qwen3MoE](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/tree/main/examples/qwen3), [Granite 4](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/tree/main/examples/granite4), [HunYuan](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/tree/main/examples/hunyuan), [Magistral 2509](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/tree/main/examples/magistral#vision), [Apertus](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/tree/main/examples/apertus), and [Seed-OSS](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/tree/main/examples/seed-oss).
 - 2025/09: Axolotl now has text diffusion training. Read more [here](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/tree/main/src/axolotl/integrations/diffusion).
 - 2025/08: QAT has been updated to include NVFP4 support. See [PR](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/pull/3107).

examples/colab-notebooks/colab-axolotl-example.ipynb

@@ -40,7 +40,7 @@
     "%%capture\n",
     "# This step can take ~5-10 minutes to install dependencies\n",
     "!pip install --no-build-isolation axolotl[flash-attn]>=0.9.1\n",
-    "!pip install \"cut-cross-entropy[transformers] @ git+https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/ml-cross-entropy.git@5eff953\""
+    "!pip install \"cut-cross-entropy[transformers] @ git+https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/ml-cross-entropy.git@f643b88\""
    ]
   },
   {

examples/magistral/README.md

@@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ Thanks to the team at MistralAI for giving us early access to prepare for these
     Here is an example of how to install from pip:
 
 ```bash
-# Ensure you have Pytorch installed (Pytorch 2.6.0 min)
+# Ensure you have Pytorch installed (Pytorch 2.7.0 min)
 pip3 install packaging==23.2 setuptools==75.8.0 wheel ninja
 pip3 install --no-build-isolation 'axolotl[flash-attn]>=0.12.0'
 ```

examples/ministral/README.md

@@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
+# Finetune Ministral with Axolotl
+
+Ministral is a family of openweight models from MistralAI found on HuggingFace at [2410](mistralai/Ministral-8B-Instruct-2410) and [2512](https://huggingface.co/collections/mistralai/ministral-3) (see [Thinking](#thinking)). This guide shows how to fine-tune it with Axolotl with multi-turn conversations and proper masking.
+
+## Getting started
+
+1. Install Axolotl following the [installation guide](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/installation.html).
+
+2. Install [Cut Cross Entropy](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/custom_integrations.html#cut-cross-entropy) to reduce training VRAM usage.
+
+3. Run the finetuning example:
+
+    ```bash
+    axolotl train examples/ministral/ministral-small-qlora.yaml
+    ```
+
+This config uses about 8.76 GiB VRAM.
+
+Let us know how it goes. Happy finetuning! 🚀
+
+### Thinking
+
+MistralAI has released their [Ministral3 2512](https://huggingface.co/collections/mistralai/ministral-3) model with thinking capabilities, enabling Chain-of-Thought reasoning with explicit thinking steps.
+
+📚 **[See the Thinking fine-tuning guide →](./think/README.md)**
+
+For Ministral3 Base/Instruct, you can reuse the above config to train supervised finetuning.
+
+### Tips
+
+- We recommend adding the same/similar SystemPrompt that the model is tuned for. You can find this within the repo's files titled `SYSTEM_PROMPT.txt`.
+- You can run a full finetuning by removing the `adapter: qlora` and `load_in_4bit: true` from the config.
+- Read more on how to load your own dataset at [docs](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/dataset_loading.html).
+- The text dataset format follows the OpenAI Messages format as seen [here](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/dataset-formats/conversation.html#chat_template).
+
+## Optimization Guides
+
+Please check the [Optimizations doc](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/optimizations.html).
+
+## Limitations
+
+We only support the `mistral-common` tokenizer for Supervised Fine-tuning at the moment and for `type: chat_template` only.
+
+In addition, we do not support overriding tokens yet.
+
+## Related Resources
+
+- [MistralAI Ministral Blog](https://mistral.ai/news/ministraux)
+- [Axolotl Docs](https://docs.axolotl.ai)
+- [Axolotl Website](https://axolotl.ai)
+- [Axolotl GitHub](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl)
+- [Axolotl Discord](https://discord.gg/7m9sfhzaf3)
+
+
+## Future Work
+
+- Add parity to Preference Tuning, RL, etc.
+- Add parity to other tokenizer configs like overriding tokens.

examples/ministral/ministral-small-qlora.yaml

@@ -0,0 +1,67 @@
+base_model: mistralai/Ministral-8B-Instruct-2410
+
+# Enable to use mistral-common tokenizer
+tokenizer_use_mistral_common: true
+
+# Automatically upload checkpoint and final model to HF
+# hub_model_id: username/custom_model_name
+
+plugins:
+  - axolotl.integrations.cut_cross_entropy.CutCrossEntropyPlugin
+
+load_in_8bit: false
+load_in_4bit: true
+
+datasets:
+  - path: fozziethebeat/alpaca_messages_2k_test
+    type: chat_template
+
+dataset_prepared_path: last_run_prepared
+val_set_size: 0.1
+output_dir: ./outputs/lora-out
+
+adapter: qlora
+lora_model_dir:
+
+sequence_len: 2048
+sample_packing: true
+
+lora_r: 32
+lora_alpha: 16
+lora_dropout: 0.05
+lora_target_linear: true
+lora_target_modules:
+  - gate_proj
+  - down_proj
+  - up_proj
+  - q_proj
+  - v_proj
+  - k_proj
+  - o_proj
+
+wandb_project:
+wandb_entity:
+wandb_watch:
+wandb_name:
+wandb_log_model:
+
+gradient_accumulation_steps: 4
+micro_batch_size: 2
+num_epochs: 1
+optimizer: adamw_bnb_8bit
+lr_scheduler: cosine
+learning_rate: 0.0002
+
+bf16: auto
+tf32: false
+
+gradient_checkpointing: true
+resume_from_checkpoint:
+logging_steps: 1
+flash_attention: true
+
+warmup_ratio: 0.1
+evals_per_epoch: 1
+saves_per_epoch: 1
+
+# save_first_step: true  # uncomment this to validate checkpoint saving works with your config

examples/ministral/think/README.md

@@ -0,0 +1,99 @@
+# Ministral3 2512 Thinking Fine-tuning
+
+This guide covers fine-tuning [Ministral3 2512](https://huggingface.co/collections/mistralai/ministral-3) with thinking capabilities using Axolotl. The thinking model enables explicit Chain-of-Thought reasoning with separate thinking and response sections.
+
+Thanks to the team at MistralAI for giving us early access to prepare for these releases.
+
+## Prerequisites
+
+Before starting, ensure you have:
+- Installed Axolotl (see [main README](../README.md))
+
+## Getting Started
+
+1. Install transformers v5
+
+    ```bash
+    pip install transformers==5.0.0rc0
+    ```
+
+    Note: This is still experimental in Axolotl. Other stuff may break.
+
+2. Upgrade `mistral-common`
+
+    ```bash
+    pip install mistral-common==1.8.6
+    ```
+
+3. Swap to the Axolotl transformers v5 branch
+
+    ```bash
+    # copy examples/ministral/think/ministral3-small-think-qlora.yaml somewhere
+    cp examples/ministral/think/ministral3-small-think-qlora.yaml ministral3-small-think-qlora.yaml
+
+    git fetch
+    git checkout transformers-v5
+    ```
+
+4. Run the thinking model fine-tuning:
+
+    ```bash
+    axolotl train ministral3-small-think-qlora.yaml
+    ```
+
+This config uses about 4.76 GiB VRAM.
+
+### Tips
+
+- Dataset uses multi-content format with `type: thinking` support. See [Dataset Format](#dataset-format) below.
+- You cannot mix `content: str` and `content: list[dict]`, otherwise, dataset loading will fail. Keep it consistent.
+
+## Dataset Format
+
+The thinking model requires the multi-content dataset format with support for an extra `role: thinking` within system and assistant messages.
+
+Example format:
+
+```json
+{
+    "messages": [
+        {
+            "role": "system",
+            "content": [
+                { "type": "text", "text": "{SYSTEM_PROMPT}"}
+            ]
+        },
+        {
+            "role": "user",
+            "content": [
+                { "type": "text", "text": "Solve this step by step: What is 15% of 240?"}
+            ]
+        },
+        {
+            "role": "assistant",
+            "content": [
+                {
+                    "type": "thinking",
+                    "thinking": "I need to calculate 15% of 240. First, I'll convert 15% to decimal: 0.15. Then multiply: 0.15 × 240 = 36."
+                },
+                {
+                    "type": "text",
+                    "text": "To find 15% of 240, I'll multiply 240 by 0.15:\n\n240 × 0.15 = 36\n\nTherefore, 15% of 240 is 36."
+                }
+            ]
+        }
+    ]
+}
+```
+
+### Advanced Options
+
+The `thinking` section supports an optional `closed` parameter:
+
+```json
+{
+    "type": "thinking",
+    "thinking": "Internal reasoning here...",
+    "closed": true  // Default: true, controls adding the closing [/THINK] tag
+}
+```

examples/ministral/think/ministral3-small-think-qlora.yaml

@@ -0,0 +1,67 @@
+base_model: mistralai/Ministral-3-3B-Reasoning-2512
+
+# Enable to use mistral-common tokenizer
+tokenizer_use_mistral_common: true
+
+# Automatically upload checkpoint and final model to HF
+# hub_model_id: username/custom_model_name
+
+plugins:
+  - axolotl.integrations.cut_cross_entropy.CutCrossEntropyPlugin
+
+load_in_8bit: false
+load_in_4bit: true
+
+datasets:
+  - path: Nanobit/text-think-2k-test
+    type: chat_template
+
+dataset_prepared_path: last_run_prepared
+val_set_size: 0
+output_dir: ./outputs/lora-out
+
+adapter: qlora
+lora_model_dir:
+
+sequence_len: 2048
+sample_packing: true
+
+lora_r: 32
+lora_alpha: 16
+lora_dropout: 0.05
+lora_target_linear: true
+lora_target_modules:
+  - gate_proj
+  - down_proj
+  - up_proj
+  - q_proj
+  - v_proj
+  - k_proj
+  - o_proj
+
+wandb_project:
+wandb_entity:
+wandb_watch:
+wandb_name:
+wandb_log_model:
+
+gradient_accumulation_steps: 4
+micro_batch_size: 2
+num_epochs: 1
+optimizer: adamw_bnb_8bit
+lr_scheduler: cosine
+learning_rate: 0.0002
+
+bf16: auto
+tf32: false
+
+gradient_checkpointing: true
+resume_from_checkpoint:
+logging_steps: 1
+flash_attention: true
+
+warmup_ratio: 0.1
+evals_per_epoch: 1
+saves_per_epoch: 1
+
+# save_first_step: true  # uncomment this to validate checkpoint saving works with your config

examples/olmo3/README.md

@@ -6,24 +6,16 @@ This guide shows how to fine-tune it with Axolotl with multi-turn conversations
 
 ## Getting started
 
-1.  Install Axolotl following the [installation guide](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/installation.html).
+1. Install Axolotl following the [installation guide](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/installation.html).
+
+2. Install [Cut Cross Entropy](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/custom_integrations.html#cut-cross-entropy) to reduce training VRAM usage.
+
+3. Run the finetuning example:
 
-    Here is an example of how to install from pip:
     ```bash
-    # Ensure you have a compatible version of Pytorch installed
+    axolotl train examples/olmo3/olmo3-7b-qlora.yaml
-    pip3 install packaging setuptools wheel ninja
-    pip3 install --no-build-isolation 'axolotl[flash-attn]>=0.12.0'
-
-    # Install Cut Cross Entropy
-    python scripts/cutcrossentropy_install.py | sh
     ```
 
-2. Run the finetuning example:
-
-```bash
-axolotl train examples/olmo3/olmo3-7b-qlora.yaml
-```
-
 Let us know how it goes. Happy finetuning! 🚀
 
 ### TIPS

scripts/cutcrossentropy_install.py

@@ -29,5 +29,5 @@ UV_PREFIX = "uv " if USE_UV else ""
 
 print(
     UNINSTALL_PREFIX
-    + f'{UV_PREFIX}pip install "cut-cross-entropy[transformers] @ git+https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/ml-cross-entropy.git@5eff953"'
+    + f'{UV_PREFIX}pip install "cut-cross-entropy[transformers] @ git+https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/ml-cross-entropy.git@f643b88"'
 )

src/axolotl/integrations/cut_cross_entropy/README.md

@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ python scripts/cutcrossentropy_install.py | sh
 
 - If you are installing from pip
 ```bash
-pip3 uninstall -y cut-cross-entropy && pip3 install "cut-cross-entropy[transformers] @ git+https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/ml-cross-entropy.git@5eff953"
+pip3 uninstall -y cut-cross-entropy && pip3 install "cut-cross-entropy[transformers] @ git+https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/ml-cross-entropy.git@f643b88"
 ```
 
 ## Usage
@@ -61,6 +61,8 @@ plugins:
 - llama4
 - llama4_text
 - llava
+- ministral
+- ministral3
 - mistral
 - mistral3
 - mixtral

src/axolotl/integrations/cut_cross_entropy/__init__.py

@@ -35,7 +35,7 @@ LOG = get_logger(__name__)
 
 _CCE_INSTALL_MESSAGE = (
     "Please install Axolotl's fork of cut_cross_entropy with transformers support using "
-    '`pip install "cut-cross-entropy[transformers] @ git+https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/ml-cross-entropy.git@5eff953"`'
+    '`pip install "cut-cross-entropy[transformers] @ git+https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/ml-cross-entropy.git@f643b88"`'
 )
 
 

src/axolotl/monkeypatch/multipack.py

@@ -52,6 +52,8 @@ SUPPORTED_MULTIPACK_MODEL_TYPES = [
     "olmo",
     "olmo2",
     "olmo3",
+    "ministral",
+    "ministral3",
     "afmoe",
 ]
 

src/axolotl/utils/mistral/mistral_tokenizer.py

@@ -218,3 +218,10 @@ class HFMistralTokenizer(MistralCommonTokenizer):
             model_input_names=model_input_names,
             clean_up_tokenization_spaces=clean_up_tokenization_spaces,
         )
+
+    def save_pretrained(self, *args, **kwargs) -> tuple[str, ...]:
+        """
+        Patches to remove save_jinja_files from being passed onwards.
+        """
+        kwargs.pop("save_jinja_files", None)
+        return super().save_pretrained(*args, **kwargs)