The complete handbook.
One connected place to learn.
Move from the core ideas to a reproducible experiment. Every chapter has its own reading space, visual companion, and a link back to the source.
Researcher guide — do not spend a year figuring this out
Build confidence with the native C++26 lab, verified downloads, numerical operators, and reproducible first steps.
Understand selective editsSelective interventions: choose where, then choose how
Understand the difference between shards, tensors, layers, and adapters. Plan a small edit and verify what stayed identical.
Inspect a real experimentMiniCPM5-1B: a reproducible selected-tensor study
Inspect the executed MiniCPM5-1B comparison, its four-tensor edit budget, uncertainty, and reproducible evidence.
Explore the collections.
142 chapters match
Overview
Full methodology: ../techniques/safety-guardrail-abliteration-methodology.md · hands-on: ../instructions/beginner-reproduction-methodology.md
Theory
For many aligned LLMs, whether the model complies or refuses a prompt can be predicted largely from the scalar projection of the residual stream onto a single direction r at a given layer.
Complete abliteration curriculum
The single path through every method, setup, and script in this handbook. Goal: this repo is the most complete abliteration reference on the internet — papers, tools, math, hardware, and…
Researcher guide — do not spend a year figuring this out
Build confidence with the native C++26 lab, verified downloads, numerical operators, and reproducible first steps.
Quickstart — test before you commit (step by step)
See if abliteration helps your model without changing weights permanently.
Beginner guide — improve your local AI model (step by step)
Methodology: beginner-reproduction-methodology.md (reproducible checkpoints) · ../techniques/safety-guardrail-abliteration-methodology.md (theory)
Selective interventions: choose where, then choose how
Understand the difference between shards, tensors, layers, and adapters. Plan a small edit and verify what stayed identical.
MiniCPM5-1B: a reproducible selected-tensor study
Inspect the executed MiniCPM5-1B comparison, its four-tensor edit budget, uncertainty, and reproducible evidence.
Evaluation
Design paired comparisons that keep refusal, capability, degeneration, and uncertainty separate.
Experiment provenance and artifact integrity
Connect each result to the exact model, data, configuration, and artifact hashes that produced it.
September 2026 research refresh
Verified on 2026-09-22. The August 50-paper catalog and its guide are preserved unchanged. This update adds 14 primary records, including the September DDO paper and previously missing…
References
Follow the primary papers and tools behind the handbook, with the existing bibliography preserved.
Abliteration — Complete Handbook
A connected overview of the research handbook, native lab, selective workflows, and supporting material.
Operational scope & responsible use
This handbook covers abliteration for authorized environments only:
Refusal & abliteration research — beginner guide (2024–2026)
Plain-language map of the papers and tools that matter for this handbook. Every entry links to a PDF in the repo where available.
Advanced abliteration workflow
Research-grade and production-hardening paths beyond default heretic <model>.
Agentic security stack (abliteration + Jarvis repair)
End-to-end pipeline for pentest lab, CyberGym, and factory firmware QA agents.
Beginner reproduction methodology
Reproducible safety guardrail abliteration — remove excessive refusal from weights while keeping the original checkpoint intact.
Environment setup — Windows, Linux, WSL (step by step)
One-time machine prep before beginner-local-model-guide.md.
Eval-driven workflow
Align Heretic measurement with deploy acceptance — factory benches, pentest labs, over-refusal checks.
Heretic workflow
Automated abliteration via p-e-w/heretic.
Inference-only prototype
No checkpoint modification — ideal first experiment.
Instructions
Step-by-step workflows. Start here if you are improving a local model for the first time.
llm-abliteration workflow
Manual measure → analyze → ablate pipeline from jim-plus/llm-abliteration v1.2. NousResearch/llm-abliteration last push 2025-11-27 — treat as frozen; do not use it as the handbook path.
Browse the complete text index 142 chapters
Start here
Practical guides
- Researcher guide — do not spend a year figuring this out
- Quickstart — test before you commit (step by step)
- Beginner guide — improve your local AI model (step by step)
- Advanced abliteration workflow
- Agentic security stack (abliteration + Jarvis repair)
- Beginner reproduction methodology
- Environment setup — Windows, Linux, WSL (step by step)
- Eval-driven workflow
- Heretic workflow
- Inference-only prototype
- Instructions
- llm-abliteration workflow
- Low VRAM & low RAM abliteration
- Manual full pipeline
- Method cookbook — commands for every abliteration stack
- Model family guide — which model & config?
- Run your abliterated model locally (Ollama, LM Studio, llama.cpp)
- Thinking models — step-by-step
- Troubleshooting encyclopedia
Methods
- Adaptive interventions and ARA: an October 2026 method map
- Attention o_proj abliteration
- Automated Heretic search
- Contrast-set design and confound control
- COSMIC direction-ID pipeline
- Direction diagnostics and causal localization
- GGUF export notes (post-abliteration)
- Gradient RDO pipeline (Refusal Direction Optimization)
- LoRA adapter export from abliteration
- Manual Transformers pipeline
- Methods
- MLP down_proj abliteration
- MoE per-expert abliteration (manual)
- Multi-direction subspace ablation
- ORBA / directional rank-1 pipeline
- Projected & norm-preserving pipeline (llm-abliteration)
- Protected-subspace abliteration
- Residual-stream hook ablation
- Safetensor abliteration pipeline
- SVD refusal-subspace pipeline
Technique atlas
- Advanced experimental methods
- Beyond the single refusal direction
- Domain-specific abliteration
- Eval-driven abliteration
- Extended abliteration toolkit
- Geometric median & winsorization
- Inference-time directional ablation
- Iterative & multi-pass abliteration
- Kernel shaping & depth profiles
- Layer-selective abliteration
- LoRA & QLoRA abliteration techniques
- Mean-difference refusal direction (DIM / Arditi)
- Model family playbook
- MoE & hybrid architecture abliteration
- Multi-category refusal — beginner guide (QCRI 2026)
- Partial-strength abliteration
- Projected & norm-preserving abliteration
- Refusal marker tuning
- Safety guardrail abliteration methodology
- Steering, RepE & alternatives to weight abliteration
- T34 — ORBA (Orthogonal Reflection Bounded Ablation)
- T35 — SOM multi-directional refusal (AAAI 2026)
- T36 — COSMIC refusal-direction identification
- T37 — SVD / whitened-SVD refusal subspace (OBLITERATUS)
- T38 — False-refusal (over-refusal) single-vector ablation
- T39 — Harmfulness and refusal are different directions
- Techniques catalog
- Thinking-model abliteration
- Vision & multimodal abliteration
- W2SV / rank-1 weight patches
Experiments & evidence
Tools & environments
- abliterate-cxx — C++26 technique platform
- abliterate-cxx nightly
- Abliteration & low-VRAM tooling catalog
- Active Directory & Windows lab exploitation
- Advanced techniques catalog — quick reference
- Agent development loop
- Agent playbooks — multi-tool chains
- Binary reversing, malware & forensics
- Bleeding-edge abliteration (2025–2026)
- C++26 abliteration platform
- Context7 integration
- Defenses against abliteration (beginner guide)
- Getting started in 10 minutes
- Hardware & firmware diagnostic command catalog
- Heretic / abliterated models (Hugging Face)
- Heretic tool files (immutable pins)
- Huihui-ai: checkpoints, methods and evidence
- Kali Linux master tool catalog
- Kali Linux metapackages
- macOS tooling — extensive reference
- Network, wireless & sniffing
- OSINT tooling
- Paper → abliterate-cxx flag
- Password cracking — hashcat & ecosystem
- Ralph turn continuations
- Ralph Wiggum loop (agent maintenance)
- Security tools reference library
- Selective research toolkit 1.2.0
- Setup encyclopedia — every practical abliteration environment
- The published research handbook
- Toolchain — safetensors, GGUF, LoRA / QLoRA (Jun 2026)
- Toy tensors (safe to commit, no model weights)
- Web application & database testing
- Windows tooling — extensive reference
- Zig advanced techniques — security & RE (canonical 0.17)
- Zig canonical syntax — 0.17 (manual analysis)
- Zig tooling — extensive reference
Research & reference
- September 2026 research refresh
- References
- 2026 research update — 50 primary papers
- Canonical Zig compiler source
- Contributing
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- Heretic tool files (immutable reference)
- JARVIS Tool Repair Pack v7 — curated import
- JARVIS Tool Repair Pack v7 (curated)
- October 2026 research refresh
- Paper term → chapter
- Quick Start (training only)
- Research corpus (offline)
- Research landscape — refusal mechanisms & removal methods
- Safe Tool Catalog for Jarvis Repair v3
- Security policy
- Upstream sources
- V6 Windows / Termux / DiskPart Expansion
- v7 Web-Researched Platform Expansion