Fine-tuned Qwen2.5-7B to 96% of Claude Haiku using about $3 of API calls

Fine-tuned Qwen2.5-7B to 96% of Claude Haiku on a domain-specific task using ~$3 of API calls and zero human labelers

A Reddit user fine-tuned Qwen2.5-7B with 1,040 DV-DPO preference pairs, costing about $3 at Claude Haiku rates, and reported 96% composite performance versus Claude Haiku on a domain task, with 11-second latency on a 4-bit T4 setup.

Why it matters: HKR-H/K/R all pass: the hook is cheap fine-tuning, with concrete DV-DPO and latency numbers. Kept at 74 because it is a single Reddit post; task scope and eval details are thin.