Choosing a Base Model

The base model sets the ceiling and the texture of what your adapter can become. A strong base with the wrong response style can still fight the behavior you want to impose.

Instruction models are usually easier for fast iteration. Reasoning-heavy or large MoE baselines may feel stronger, but they can also introduce more latency, more verbosity, or less predictable conversational texture.

Ruixen keeps this resource indexed because base choice is often the earliest leverage point that saves people from training the wrong thing well.