---
title: Conversation
description: Conversation format for supervised fine-tuning.
order: 3
---

## sharegpt

conversations where `from` is `human`/`gpt`. (optional: first row with role `system` to override default system prompt)

```{.json filename="data.jsonl"}
{"conversations": [{"from": "...", "value": "..."}]}
```

Note: `type: sharegpt` opens special configs:
- `conversation`: enables conversions to many Conversation types. Refer to the 'name' [here](https://github.com/lm-sys/FastChat/blob/main/fastchat/conversation.py) for options.
- `roles`: allows you to specify the roles for input and output. This is useful for datasets with custom roles such as `tool` etc to support masking.
- `field_human`: specify the key to use instead of `human` in the conversation.
- `field_model`: specify the key to use instead of `gpt` in the conversation.

```yaml
datasets:
    path: ...
    type: sharegpt

    conversation: # Options (see Conversation 'name'): https://github.com/lm-sys/FastChat/blob/main/fastchat/conversation.py
    field_human: # Optional[str]. Human key to use for conversation.
    field_model: # Optional[str]. Assistant key to use for conversation.
    # Add additional keys from your dataset as input or output roles
    roles:
      input: # Optional[List[str]]. These will be masked based on train_on_input
      output: # Optional[List[str]].
```

## pygmalion

```{.json filename="data.jsonl"}
{"conversations": [{"role": "...", "value": "..."}]}
```

## sharegpt.load_role

conversations where `role` is used instead of `from`

```{.json filename="data.jsonl"}
{"conversations": [{"role": "...", "value": "..."}]}
```

## sharegpt.load_guanaco

conversations where `from` is `prompter` `assistant` instead of default sharegpt

```{.json filename="data.jsonl"}
{"conversations": [{"from": "...", "value": "..."}]}
```

## sharegpt.load_ultrachat

conversations where the turns field is 'messages', human is 'user' and gpt is 'assistant'.

```{.json filename="data.jsonl"}
{"messages": [{"user": "...", "assistant": "..."}]}
```

## sharegpt_jokes

creates a chat where bot is asked to tell a joke, then explain why the joke is funny

```{.json filename="data.jsonl"}
{"conversations": [{"title": "...", "text": "...", "explanation": "..."}]}
```


## chat_template

Chat Template strategy uses a jinja2 template that converts a list of messages into a prompt. Usually this chat template is stored in tokenizer_config.json under the key `chat_template`.

Conversational data would normally look like follows:

```{.json filename="data.jsonl"}
{"messages": [{"role": "...", "content": "..."}]}
```

with roles usually being system, user, assistant, etc.
However, all fields can be customized using the following configuration:

```yaml
datasets:
  - path: ...
    # Set type to `chat_template` to use this strategy
    type: chat_template
    # Specify the name of the chat template to use
    # The name of the chat template to use for training, following values are supported:
    # - tokenizer_default: Uses the chat template that is available in the tokenizer_config.json. If the chat template is not available in the tokenizer, it will raise an error. This is the default value.
    # - alpaca/inst/chatml/gemma/cohere/llama3/phi_3/deepseek_v2/jamba: These chat templates are available in the axolotl codebase at src/axolotl/utils/chat_templates.py
    # - tokenizer_default_fallback_*: where * is the name of the chat template to fallback to. E.g. tokenizer_default_fallback_chatml. This is useful when the chat template is not available in the tokenizer.
    # - jinja: Uses a custom jinja template for the chat template. The custom jinja template should be provided in the chat_template_jinja field.
    chat_template: tokenizer_default
    # custom jinja template for chat template. This will be only used if chat_template is set to `jinja` or `null` (in which case chat_template is automatically set to `jinja`). Default is null.
    chat_template_jinja: null
    # The key in the data example that contains the messages. Default is "conversations".
    field_messages: conversations
    # The key in the message turn that contains the role. Default is "from".
    message_field_role: from
    # The key in the message turn that contains the content. Default is "value".
    message_field_content: value
    # Role mapping for the messages. This can be useful if you are combining data from multiple sources and the roles are different.
    roles:
      human: user
      user: user
      assistant: assistant
      gpt: assistant
      system: system
    # Roles to train on. The tokens from these roles will be considered for the loss. Default is ["gpt", "assistant"]
    roles_to_train: ["gpt", "assistant"]
    # Which EOS tokens to train on in the conversation. Possible values are:
    # - all: train on all EOS tokens
    # - turn: train on the EOS token at the end of each trainable turn
    # - last: train on the last EOS token in the conversation
    # - none: do not train on EOS tokens
    # Default is "turn".
    train_on_eos: turn
    # The key in the message turn that indicates if tokens of a turn should be considered for training. This is an advanced option useful to selectively train on certain turns besides the `roles_to_train`. Default is "training".
    message_field_training: training
    # The key in the message turn that contains the training details. This is an advanced option useful to selectively train on certain tokens in a turn. Default is "train_detail".
    message_field_training_detail: train_detail
```

### Examples

1. Using the default chat template in the tokenizer_config.json on OpenAI messages format

```yaml
datasets:
  - path: ...
    type: chat_template
    chat_template: tokenizer_default
    field_messages: messages
    message_field_role: role
    message_field_content: content
    roles:
      user: user
      assistant: assistant
      human: user
      gpt: assistant
      system: system
    roles_to_train: ["assistant"]
```

2. Using a custom jinja template on OpenAI messages format

```yaml
datasets:
  - path: ...
    type: chat_template
    chat_template: jinja
    chat_template_jinja: "{{ bos_token }}{% for message in messages %}{% if (message['role'] == 'system') %}{{'<|system|>' + '\n' + message['content'] + '<|end|>' + '\n'}}{% elif (message['role'] == 'user') %}{{'<|user|>' + '\n' + message['content'] + '<|end|>' + '\n' + '<|assistant|>' + '\n'}}{% elif message['role'] == 'assistant' %}{{message['content'] + '<|end|>' + '\n'}}{% endif %}{% endfor %}"
    field_messages: messages
    message_field_role: role
    message_field_content: content
    roles:
      user: user
      assistant: assistant
      human: user
      gpt: assistant
      system: system
    roles_to_train: ["assistant"]
```

3. Using fine-grained control over tokens and turns to train in a conversation


For a data sample that looks like:

```{.json filename="data.jsonl"}
{
  "conversations": [
    {"from": "system", "value": "You are an AI assistant.", "train": false},
    {"from": "human", "value": "Hello", "train": false},
    {"from": "assistant", "value": "Hello", "train": true},
    {"from": "human", "value": "How are you?", "train": true},
    {
      "from": "assistant",
      "value": "I'm doing very well, thank you!",
      "train_detail": [
        {"begin_offset": 0, "end_offset": 8, "train": false},
        {"begin_offset": 9, "end_offset": 18, "train": true},
        {"begin_offset": 19, "end_offset": 30, "train": false},
      ],
    },
    {
        "from": "human",
        "value": "I'm doing very well, thank you!",
        "train": true,
    },
    {"from": "assistant", "value": "Hi there!", "train": true}
  ]
}
```

The configuration would look like:

```yaml
datasets:
  - path: ...
    chat_template: tokenizer_default
    field_messages: conversations
    message_field_role: from
    message_field_content: value
    roles:
      human: human
      user: human
      assistant: assistant
      gpt: assistant
      system: system
    roles_to_train: []
    train_on_eos: turn
    message_field_training: train
    message_field_training_detail: train_detail
```