A Deep Dive into

Self-Improving
LLM
Architectures with
Open Source
Karan Chandra Dey

Building the
Next Generation
of AI
Introduction: Beyond Static Intelligence
Karan Chandra Dey

Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionized countless fields,

demonstrating remarkable capabilities in text generation, translation, and
reasoning. However, many current deployments remain relatively static –
trained on vast datasets but lacking the intrinsic ability to learn and adapt
continuously from new interactions and feedback after deployment.

The next frontier in AI lies in creating systems that possess this capability:
Self-Improving LLMs. Imagine AI that doesn't just execute tasks but
actively evaluates its performance, identifies flaws, learns from mistakes,
and refines its own internal models over time. This isn't a distant dream; it's
an achievable goal, thanks largely to a vibrant and rapidly evolving
open-source ecosystem.

This article explores a comprehensive architecture for building such

self-improving systems, leveraging readily available open-source
technologies. We'll break down the essential components, the critical
feedback loops, and the workflow that enables LLMs to embark on a
continuous journey of self-betterment.
Karan Chandra Dey
Building Self-Improving LLMs with Open
Source Technology: A Comprehensive Guide
Self-improving Large Language Models represent the
cutting edge of AI development. By combining various
open source tools and frameworks, you can build
systems that continuously evaluate and enhance their
own performance. Let's explore the technology stack that
makes this possible, going from foundation models to the
complete ecosystem

1. Foundation Models: The Core of Your System

Modern self-improving LLMs start with powerful
foundation models that provide the base capabilities.
Several open source options are available:
Meta Llama 3 represents the latest in Meta's LLama
family, offering strong performance across various tasks
with models ranging from 8B to 70B parameters. It's
designed with a focus on instruction following and
reasoning capabilities, making it an excellent base for
self-improvement.
Mistral AI models (including Mistral 7B and the larger
Mixtral models) provide impressive performance with
efficient architecture choices. Mixtral's mixture-of-experts
architecture allows it to achieve performance comparable
to much larger models while keeping inference costs
lower.
Google Gemma provides compact yet powerful models
(2B and 7B parameters) optimized for responsible AI
applications, with good instruction-following capabilities
that serve as a foundation for self-improvement.
Falcon, MPT, and other open models round out the
ecosystem, each with different strengths and optimization
targets.
These foundation models serve as the starting point, but
self-improvement requires additional components to
create a complete system.

Karan Chandra Dey

2. Orchestration Layer: Coordinating the
Self-Improvement Workflow

The orchestration layer manages the complex workflow of

self-improvement, connecting various components and
managing the flow of data, prompts, and evaluations.
LangChain provides a framework for creating chains of LLM
calls with memory, tools, and retrieval systems. It's particularly
useful for structuring the self-critique process by breaking it
into steps like:

Initial response generation

Self-critique prompting
Response improvement based on critique
Error checking

LangGraph extends LangChain with directed acyclic graphs

and state management, making it ideal for the iterative nature
of self-improvement. You can create complex decision trees
where the model can take different paths based on its
self-evaluation results.
LlamaIndex specializes in knowledge integration and retrieval,
helping models access and reason over external information
during self-improvement.
AutoGen enables multi-agent conversations, allowing you to
create specialized agents for different aspects of
self-improvement (e.g., a critic agent, a fact-checker agent, and
an improver agent).
Haystack provides another option for building complex LLM
pipelines with a focus on question-answering and retrieval.

Karan Chandra Dey

3. Vector Databases: Knowledge Storage and
Retrieval

Self-improving LLMs need access to knowledge and previous

experiences to learn effectively. Vector databases store
embeddings that enable semantic search and retrieval:
ChromaDB offers a lightweight, easy-to-deploy solution ideal for
development and smaller projects. It integrates seamlessly with
LangChain and LlamaIndex.
Qdrant provides a production-ready vector database with
filtering capabilities and cloud options, useful for more complex
retrieval scenarios.
Pinecone delivers a managed vector database service with
auto-scaling and global distribution for high-reliability
applications.
Weaviate combines vector search with GraphQL for more
complex knowledge structures, supporting multimodal
embeddings.
PGVector extends PostgreSQL with vector capabilities, making
it useful when you need to integrate with existing PostgreSQL
infrastructure.
Milvus offers a highly scalable solution for large-scale vector
search applications.
Vector databases serve several purposes in a self-improving
LLM system:

Storing examples of good and bad model outputs for

comparison learning
Maintaining a knowledge base that the model can reference
during self-critique
Creating retrieval-augmented generation capabilities to
improve factual accuracy Karan Chandra Dey
Enabling semantic search over previous model evaluations to
identify patterns
4. Graph Databases: Modeling Complex
Relationships

While vector databases excel at semantic similarity,

graph databases capture explicit relationships between
concepts, which is crucial for reasoning tasks:
Neo4j provides a mature graph database with a rich
query language (Cypher) and visualization tools that help
model complex knowledge structures.
Dgraph offers a distributed graph database with
GraphQL integration, useful for web-scale applications.
JanusGraph delivers a scalable graph database that
integrates with big data systems like Spark and Hadoop.

Graph databases enable self-improving LLMs to:

• Model relationships between concepts for better

reasoning
• Track cause-effect relationships in model outputs
• Represent knowledge hierarchies for structured
learning
• Store the logical steps of reasoning for later analysis

Karan Chandra Dey

5. Self-Critique System: The Engine of
Improvement

The self-critique system is what enables models to evaluate

and improve their own outputs:
ReAct (Reasoning + Acting) framework combines reasoning
traces with action steps, allowing models to think through
problems step-by-step while interacting with tools.
Reflexion implements a reflection mechanism where
models critique their own outputs and then improve them in
subsequent iterations.
Chain-of-Thought prompting encourages models to break
down complex problems into intermediate reasoning steps,
making errors more visible and fixable.
Tree-of-Thought extends Chain-of-Thought by exploring
multiple reasoning paths simultaneously, allowing the model
to compare different approaches and select the best one.
Constitutional AI provides a framework of principles that
guide self-improvement, ensuring alignment with human
values and preventing unsafe outputs.
These techniques work together to create a system where
the model can:

Generate an initial response

Evaluate that response against multiple criteria
Identify specific areas for improvement
Generate a revised response that addresses the identified
issues Karan Chandra Dey
Store both the original and improved responses for learning
6. Evaluation & Monitoring: Measuring
Improvement

To improve, models need accurate

measurements of their performance:
LangSmith Evals provides a platform for
evaluating LLM applications with custom metrics
and human feedback integration.
RAGAS specializes in evaluating
retrieval-augmented generation systems, focusing
on faithfulness, answer relevance, and context
relevance.
MLflow offers an open platform for the machine
learning lifecycle, including experiment tracking
and model registry.
Weights & Biases provides comprehensive
experiment tracking, visualization, and
collaboration tools.
promptfoo enables systematic evaluation of
prompt engineering across different models and
parameters.
Deepchecks helps validate model quality and
monitor for issues like bias or data drift.

These tools enable continuous monitoring of

model performance across dimensions like:

• Factual accuracy
• Reasoning quality
• Helpfulness
• Safety
• Alignment with human preferences Karan Chandra Dey
ML Algorithms for Improvement: Learning from
Feedback

Once you've collected evaluations, you need algorithms to turn that

feedback into model improvements:
Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) is a reinforcement learning algorithm
that efficiently updates model parameters while preventing destructive
updates. It's the classic approach used in RLHF.
Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) provides a more efficient alternative
to PPO by directly optimizing for human preferences without a separate
reward model.
KL-regularized Trade-off Optimization (KTO) balances staying close to the
original model while optimizing for preferences, preventing overfitting to
limited feedback data.
Rejection Policy Optimization (RPO) learns from rejected outputs, creating
a more efficient training signal.
Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) creates the foundation for other
optimization approaches by fine-tuning models on high-quality examples.
These algorithms enable models to:
• Learn from human preferences without explicit rewards
• Balance improvement against maintaining existing capabilities
• Make targeted updates to address specific weaknesses
• Continuously adapt to new feedback

Training & Fine-tuning Infrastructure: Implementing

Improvements

The training infrastructure implements the ML algorithms and applies updates to

the models:
• Hugging Face Transformers provides standardized implementations of
transformer models and training routines, serving as the backbone of most LLM
work.
• DeepSpeed offers optimization techniques that reduce memory requirements
and speed up training, enabling work with larger models on limited hardware.
• PyTorch serves as the fundamental deep learning framework for most LLM
development, with excellent support for distributed training.
• PEFT (Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning) techniques like LoRA, QLoRA, and
adapter layers make it possible to fine-tune large models with minimal
computational resources.
• TRL (Transformer Reinforcement Learning) provides implementations of RLHF
algorithms specifically designed for large language models.
These tools enable efficient implementation of the improvement cycle, allowing
models to be updated based on feedback with reasonable computational
resources. Karan Chandra Dey
Data Processing & Feature Extraction: Preparing Learning
Materials
Effective self-improvement requires efficiently processing large volumes
of data:
Ray provides a distributed computing framework that scales data
processing across clusters, essential for working with large datasets.
Dask offers parallel computing with a familiar Python interface, useful for
preprocessing and feature extraction.
Pandas delivers fundamental data manipulation capabilities for
structured data processing.
Apache Spark enables big data processing for extremely large datasets.
HuggingFace Datasets provides optimized data loading and processing
for ML training.
These tools help prepare the data needed for self-improvement by:

Processing raw text into training examples

Extracting features from model outputs for evaluation
Transforming human feedback into learning signals
Managing the pipeline from raw data to fine-tuning

Embeddings & Representations: Understanding Meaning

Embedding models convert text into vector representations that capture

semantic meaning:
Sentence Transformers provide specialized models for creating
high-quality text embeddings optimized for semantic similarity.
E5 Embeddings offer state-of-the-art text representations developed by
Microsoft.
BGE Embeddings (BAAI General Embeddings) provide multilingual
embeddings with strong performance on retrieval tasks.
InstructOR specializes in instruction-tuned text embeddings that can be
customized for specific tasks.
These embedding models serve several purposes in a self-improving
LLM:

Converting text into vectors for storage in vector databases

Enabling semantic search for relevant examples and information
Measuring similarity between model outputs and ideal responses
Providing features for evaluation and monitoring systems
Karan Chandra Dey
Serving Infrastructure: Deploying Models
Once models are improved, they need to be efficiently
deployed:
vLLM provides high-throughput LLM serving with
PagedAttention, significantly increasing inference
speed and concurrency.
NVIDIA Triton offers a universal inference server
supporting multiple frameworks and hardware
accelerators.
Text Generation Inference (TGI) specializes in
optimized serving for text generation models.
FastAPI delivers a high-performance web framework
for building APIs around deployed models.
Ray Serve provides a scalable model serving
framework that integrates with the Ray ecosystem.
These tools ensure that your self-improving LLMs can
be efficiently deployed and accessed, enabling:

Low-latency inference for interactive applications

Scaling to handle multiple users
Efficient resource utilization
A/B testing between different model versions to
measure improvement

Karan Chandra Dey

Addressing Bias Amplification in
Self-Improving LLMs with Open
Source Tools

# Example: Multi-perspective self-critique using LangGraph

from langgraph.graph import Graph

import chromadb
from ragas.metrics import bias_metrics

# Create perspective-specific collections

chroma_client = chromadb.Client()
global_perspective = chroma_client.create_collection("global_perspectives")
underrepresented_perspective = chroma_client.create_collection("underrepresented_perspectives")

# Define the self-critique graph

critique_graph = Graph()

@critique_graph.node
def generate_response(state):
# Initial response generation
return {"response": state["llm"].generate(state["query"])}

@critique_graph.node
def critique_from_majority_perspective(state):
# Retrieve context from global perspectives
context = global_perspective.query(state["response"])
# Generate critique based on mainstream viewpoints
return {"majority_critique": state["llm"].critique(state["response"], context)}

@critique_graph.node
def critique_from_underrepresented_perspective(state):
# Retrieve context from underrepresented perspectives
context = underrepresented_perspective.query(state["response"])
# Generate critique focused on potential harms to marginalized groups
return {"minority_critique": state["llm"].critique(state["response"], context)}

@critique_graph.node
def integrate_critiques(state):
# Weighted combination of critiques ensuring underrepresented views aren't lost
combined_critique = combine_with_fairness_weighting(
state["majority_critique"],
state["minority_critique"]
)
return {"final_critique": combined_critique}

@critique_graph.node
def improve_response(state):
# Generate improved response addressing all critique perspectives
improved = state["llm"].improve(
state["response"],
state["final_critique"]
)

# Check for bias in improved response

bias_score = bias_metrics.evaluate(improved)
if bias_score > THRESHOLD:
# If still biased, trigger additional review
return {"needs_review": True, "improved_response": improved}

return {"improved_response": improved}

# Connect the nodes

critique_graph.add_edge("generate_response", "critique_from_majority_perspective")
critique_graph.add_edge("generate_response", "critique_from_underrepresented_perspective")
critique_graph.add_edge("critique_from_majority_perspective", "integrate_critiques")
critique_graph.add_edge("critique_from_underrepresented_perspective", "integrate_critiques")
critique_graph.add_edge("integrate_critiques", "improve_response")

# Compile the graph

app = critique_graph.compile()

Karan Chandra Dey

Multi-Perspective Evaluation Frameworks
Bias detection requires diverse evaluation perspectives. Using open-source tools:

Implement Diverse Evaluation Models with RAGAS and promptfoo:

Create specialized evaluation chains that explicitly check for different types of bias (cultural, gender, political,
etc.)
Use promptfoo to systematically test model outputs against diverse scenarios and stakeholder perspectives
Rotate evaluation criteria to ensure no single metric dominates the improvement cycle

LangGraph for Adversarial Perspective Taking:

Design workflows where the model must evaluate its outputs from multiple explicitly different worldviews
Create "red team" nodes in your LangGraph that specifically challenge the model's assumptions from
underrepresented perspectives
Implement "bias advocate" components that deliberately search for potential harms to marginalized groups

Transparent Data Governance

Community Data Pipeline Management with Ray and Deepchecks:

Implement automated bias detection in data processing pipelines using Deepchecks

Create transparent metadata tracking for all training examples, including source, demographic characteristics,
and potential bias markers
Use Ray to scale data quality analysis across large community-contributed datasets

Neo4j for Bias Network Analysis:

Create knowledge graphs that map relationships between concepts, sources, and potential biases
Track how different community sources influence model improvements over time
Visualize and analyze the propagation of specific viewpoints through the self-improvement cycle

Diversified Knowledge Representation

Vector Database Strategies with ChromaDB/Weaviate:

Create separate "perspective collections" in your vector database that explicitly contain diverse viewpoints
Implement retrieval strategies that deliberately pull from demographically diverse sources when providing
context for self-critique
Use vector similarity metrics to detect when feedback is clustering around particular ideological positions

Balanced Feedback Integration:

Weight feedback sources based on underrepresentation to ensure diversity

Implement automatic detection of demographic skew in feedback data
Create separate ChromaDB collections for different cultural and demographic perspectives

Algorithmic Safeguards

Direct Preference Optimization with Constraints:

Modify DPO implementations to include explicit fairness constraints
Implement KTO (KL-regularized Trade-off Optimization) with fairness-aware regularization terms
Use the Constitutional AI principles as explicit constraints in preference optimization

Karan Chandra Dey

Hugging Face Evaluations and Integrations:
Leverage community-developed bias evaluation metrics in the Hugging Face ecosystem
Implement PEFT fine-tuning approaches that can target bias mitigation without disrupting general capabilities
Contribute your bias evaluation pipelines back to the community to improve ecosystem-wide practices