Chat Models vs Instruction Models: What’s the Difference?
When browsing model repositories like Hugging Face, you’ll encounter confusingly similar model names: “Llama-3-8B,” “Llama-3-8B-Instruct,” and sometimes “Llama-3-8B-Chat.” These aren’t just marketing variations—they represent fundamentally different models trained for different purposes. Understanding the distinction between base models, instruction-tuned models, and chat-optimized models determines whether your application succeeds or produces frustrating, unusable outputs. The confusion is … Read more