What is LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation)?

A parameter-efficient fine-tuning technique that trains a small number of additional parameters instead of modifying the full model. LoRA adapters are typically 10–100 MB versus the full model's multi-GB size. On Apple Silicon, LoRA fine-tuning via MLX makes it practical to customize models on consumer hardware — The LLMCheck index shows a 7B model can be fine-tuned on an M4 Max in hours rather than days.