Granite Build

Granite.Build

Build orchestration for LLM pipelines. Define multi-step model workflows in YAML — download, fine-tune, evaluate, and deploy — and run them locally or on cloud infrastructure.

This repository is currently in alpha. The code and documentation are under active development and may change frequently as we work to improve usability and reliability. Contributions and feedback are welcome, but please be aware that breaking changes may occur.

What is Granite.Build?

Granite.Build orchestrates LLM build pipelines. You describe your workflow in a build.yaml file — which models to download, how to fine-tune them, what evaluations to run — and Granite.Build executes each step in the environment you choose: a local Docker container, a Kubernetes cluster, a cloud GPU instance, or a plain bash process on your laptop.

The system has three main components:

• gbserver — the orchestration server. It provides a REST API (/api/v1) for build management and a build watcher that polls for pending builds and dispatches them to execution environments. It stores build metadata in SQLite (standalone) or PostgreSQL (production).

• gb (gbcli) — the command-line client. It talks to the server's REST API to submit builds, list status, manage artifacts, and more.

• build.yaml — the pipeline definition. Each file declares a set of named targets (logical stages like "download", "fine-tune", "evaluate"). Each target specifies an execution environment, input/output artifacts, and one or more steps to run. Targets can depend on each other through artifact bindings — when an upstream target produces an output, downstream targets that reference it are automatically dispatched.

<p align="center"> <img src="docs/images/build-structure.jpg" alt="Build Structure" width="50%" /> </p>

2. Create the venv and install (no Artifactory or cloud creds needed)

make standalone-venv PYTHON=python3.13 source .venv/bin/activate

4. Activate the venv and submit the sample build

cd granite.build source .venv/bin/activate export GB_ENVIRONMENT=STANDALONE gb build start -f samples/standalone/standalone-quickstart/build.yaml

Example `build.yaml`

A minimal pipeline that runs a single step in a Docker container:

llm.build:                   # alias: granite.build (both keys are accepted)
  name: my-build
  targets:
    download:
      environment_uri: space://environments/docker
      inputs:
        model:
          uri: hf://huggingface.co/ibm-granite/granite-3.3-2b-instruct
      outputs:
        model:
          uri: file:workspace/model
      steps:
        - step_uri: space://steps/somestep

A multi-target pipeline chains stages through bindings:

llm.build:
  name: tune-and-eval
  targets:
    download:
      environment_uri: space://environments/docker
      outputs:
        model: { uri: file:workspace/model }
      steps:
        - step_uri: space://steps/somestep
    fine-tune:
      environment_uri: space://environments/docker
      inputs:
        model: { binding: download.model }
      outputs:
        checkpoint: { uri: file:workspace/checkpoint }
      steps:
        - step_uri: space://steps/sft
    evaluate:
      environment_uri: space://environments/docker
      inputs:
        model: { binding: fine-tune.checkpoint }
      steps:
        - step_uri: space://steps/eval

For the full schema, see docs/users/build-yaml-reference.md.

Standalone Docker — fine-tune + eval in containers on this machine

make demo-venv PYTHON=python3.13 && source .venv/bin/activate bash scripts/demo-standalone.sh

SLURM via SkyPilot — same workload on a local Docker SLURM cluster, with MinIO push

make g4os-skypilot-venv PYTHON=python3.13 && source .venv/bin/activate make minio-setup && make slurm-setup bash scripts/demo-slurm.sh ```

Quick start (standalone)

Five commands to a running build, using the bundled standalone-quickstart sample.

In a new terminal, run the following: ```bash

Try the demos

End-to-end demos with TRL fine-tuning and unitxt evaluation. Each runs locally and tears down cleanly. Full setup instructions in docs/demos.md.

```bash

Supported environments

REST API

The REST API is available at /api/v1 when the server is running. Start with gbserver standalone or gbserver rest-server and visit http://localhost:8080/docs for the interactive OpenAPI documentation. Authentication options (GitHub, IBMid, API key) are documented in docs/operators/multi-provider-authentication.md.