LET'S DEFINE THE PIECES

Everything you need to know falls into one of three categories:

1. MODELS (LLMs)

These are the brains.
They are NOT software.
They are NOT programs.
They are NOT plugins.
They are neural networks stored in a single file, usually:

model.gguf
model.safetensors
model.bin

Examples of models:
LLaMA-3 8B
LLaMA-3 70B
Mistral 7B
Mixtral 8x7B
Qwen 2 7B
Phi-3

A model file contains:
Neurons
Synapses
Every learned pattern
All the intelligence

A model does NOT:

Have a UI
Open PDFs
Connect to NASA
Run indexing
Provide a chat window

It only takes text in → text out.

2. MODEL RUNTIMES (ENGINES)

These are the programs that LOAD and RUN the model's brain.
Think of a “runtime” as the machine that runs a model file.

===== Runtimes include ===== :
✔ Ollama

Terminal-based
Local API
Can fine-tune
Good for automation
Good for pipelines
Very flexible
Acts like a backend server

✔ LM Studio

GUI desktop app
Easy model downloading
Drag-and-drop PDFs
File chat
Rudimentary RAG
Easy to test many models
Great for tinkering

✔ GPT4All

GUI
Also a runtime
Similar to LM Studio
Not as modern

✔ koboldcpp

Runtime specialized for story-writing/roleplay
GUI
Some fine-tuning tools

✔ Faraday / Unsloth / Axolotl (training tools, not chatbots)

These are training engines, not chat apps.

You don’t talk to them; you use them to train a model.

Summary

Models = The brains
Runtimes = The engines that run the brains
Training tools = The machines that modify the brains

3. TRAINING TOOLS (NEURAL LEARNING, “NEW SYNAPSES”)

This is where real learning happens. Not prompts. Not memory.
Not RAG. (library model), Actual neural adjustment.

\code\

Tools include: ✔ Axolotl

THE standard for fine-tuning LLaMA, Mistral, etc.
Used by researchers, labs, and giants.

✔ Unsloth

A faster, more GPU-efficient training toolkit.
Great for consumer GPUs like yours.

✔ Faraday

A more experimental training tool, but advanced.

* These tools: * Read your dataset

Modify the model’s weights
Produce a new personalized model

This is real learning.