The document discusses the importance and methodology of building domain-specific large language models (LLMs), highlighting their superior performance in specialized tasks compared to general-purpose models. It outlines the process of training, fine-tuning, and the advantages of domain-specific LLMs in various fields like healthcare, finance, and legal services. Additionally, it addresses the challenges encountered in developing these models and provides examples and use cases demonstrating their effectiveness across industries.

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December 18, 2024
Build Domain-Specific LLMs: Step-by-Step Blueprint
solulab.com/how-to-build-domain-specific-llms
ChatGPT’s extensive language capabilities have effectively drawn in the general
population. Soon after its debut, the AI chatbot excels in a wide range of language tasks,
such as writing lyrics, poetry, essays, and codes. ChatGPT, which is based on the
Generative Pre-training Transformer (GPT) architecture, is an example of what large
language models (LLMs) can do, especially when they are modified for usage in business
applications. One of the examples of domain-specific LLMs, known as LegalBERT (Legal
LLM) achieved 25% better accuracy on legal-specific tasks like legal text classification
compared to generic LLMs and fine-tuned on 12 GB of legal text data sourced from
court decisions, contracts, and legislation.
Despite their widespread use, basic models like GPT, LlaMa, and Falcon are only
appropriate for jobs that require additional fine-tuning. Foundational models lack the
domain-specific information necessary to be useful in the majority of industrial or
corporate applications, despite their exceptional performance in a wider context.
In this blog, we’ll understand the basics and how to create a domain-specific LLM along
with their use cases and applications in more depth.
What is a Domain-Specific LLM?

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A domain-specific LLM is a generic model that has been trained or optimized to carry out
specific activities that are governed by corporate policies.
The shortcomings of generic LLMs in specialized disciplines are intended to be
addressed by domain-specific large language models. A domain-specific LLM
concentrates on a specific field, in contrast to its generic counterparts, which are trained
on a broad range of text sources to gain comprehensive knowledge applicable across
various domains.
Specialized fields having their own jargon, procedures, and communication standards,
such as law, medicine, IT, finance, or insurance, may fall under this category. Building
upon this basis, domain-specific LLMs frequently start out as small language models that
are then enhanced and improved by fine-tuning LLM approaches.
Fine-tuning entails modifying the model using a condensed dataset that is abundant in
case studies, scenarios, and specialized language relevant to the subject in question.
This fine-tuning process, often referred to as Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT),
focuses on adapting the model effectively by leveraging task-specific data while
minimizing the need for extensive computational resources. The objective is to fine-tune
LLM to review requests that match certain guidelines, equipping it with the skills
necessary to comprehend and produce literature that adheres to the complex demands of
the area and professional norms.
In the targeted industry, this customized methodology guarantees that Domain-specific
LLMs provide unmatched accuracy and relevance in their outputs, greatly improving
research skills, decision-making, and customer interactions. These models go beyond the
abilities of generic LLMs by focusing on the unique requirements and complexity of each
domain, giving businesses a competitive edge through sophisticated and industry-specific
AI solutions. Using a customized model trained for specific use cases improves these
solutions’ accuracy and applicability even further.
The Importance of Domain-Specific LLMs in Data-Driven Fields
The fundamental difference between domain-specific LLMs and general-purpose models
lies in their training and use. Custom-trained language models are developed using
datasets that are densely focused on specific fields, adapting to the distinct needs and
characteristics of these domains. This targeted training approach allows them to achieve
a deeper understanding and mastery of specialized subjects, making them essential for
tasks that demand expert-level knowledge.

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For example, in the healthcare sector, custom LLMs excel at processing and generating
content related to medical terminologies, procedures, and patient care. These models
significantly outperform generic LLMs when applied to medical contexts, providing a
higher level of accuracy and relevance.
The process of training custom LLMs not only improves their efficiency in specialized
tasks but also ensures more precise and contextually appropriate outputs. This
underscores the value of rigorous evaluation to measure the performance and reliability
of such models. As a result, these domain-specific custom LLMs have become
indispensable for professionals in fields where precision and expertise are critical.
Why Build a Domain-Specific LLM?
General-purpose LLMs are celebrated for their scalability and conversational capabilities.
These models allow anyone to interact with them and receive human-like responses, a
remarkable advancement that seemed unimaginable to the public just a few years ago
but is now a reality.
However, foundational models have their limitations despite their impressive natural
language processing capabilities. It didn’t take long for users to realize that these models,
such as ChatGPT, can hallucinate and produce inaccurate information when prompted.
For instance, a lawyer who relied on the chatbot for research ended up presenting
fabricated cases to the court.
The truth is that foundational models lack the ability to comprehend specific contexts
beyond the vast datasets they were trained on. If a language model hasn’t been trained
with legal corpora or doesn’t include safeguards to identify fake outputs, it can create
fictional scenarios or misinterpret the nuances of legal cases.
As we admire how naturally large language model operations (LLMOps) can interact, it’s
crucial to remember their limitations. At their core, domain-specific language models are
powered by neural networks designed to predict linguistic patterns. They cannot discern
truths in the way humans do or link textual concepts to objects or events in the real world.
Another limitation of general LLMs is their difficulty with processing lengthy contexts. For
example, GPT-4 can handle up to 4K tokens, though a version supporting 32K tokens is
in development. Without a sufficiently large context window, an LLM may struggle to
produce coherent and relevant outputs.
This is where the need to fine-tune LLM for domain-specific needs arises. Customizing a
model with specialized knowledge enables it to operate more accurately within its
intended context. By building a domain-specific LLM, organizations can ensure their
models are tailored to their specific requirements. For example, a fine-tuned, domain-
specific LLM combined with semantic search can deliver precise and contextually
relevant results in a conversational manner, making it a powerful tool for specialized
applications.

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How to Create a Domain-Specific LLM?
Developing a domain-specific large language model (LLM) requires a well-structured
methodology. The process starts with broad training on diverse data and transitions to
fine-tuning with specialized datasets. This ensures the models are both broadly
competent and optimized for AI for domain-specific tasks.
Base Model Training
General Training Data
Initially, LLMs are trained on extensive datasets drawn from various sources, such as web
pages, books, and articles. This phase equips the models with a broad understanding of
language, enabling them to perform tasks like translation, summarization, and question-
answering.
Specialized Training Data
To make the models applicable to specific industries, they are fine-tuned using domain-
specific datasets. This step involves training the model with field-specific materials, such
as healthcare records for medical applications, legal documents for the legal sector, or
financial reports for finance.
How to Fine-Tune an LLM?
The fine-tuning phase customizes a broadly trained base model to excel in specialized
tasks. It ensures the model retains its general linguistic capabilities while enhancing its
performance in domain-specific contexts. Depending on the application, various
techniques can be employed to fine-tune the model effectively:
Technique Description Example

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Task-
Specific
Fine-
Tuning
Updating all parameters of the pre-
trained model using a dataset tailored
to a specific task.
Fine-tuning BERT for sentiment
analysis on movie reviews.
Feature-
Based
Approach
Keeping the pre-trained model’s
parameters fixed and adding task-
specific layers.
Adding a classifier layer to a pre-
trained BERT model for text
classification.
Transfer
Learning
Techniques
Adopting a two-step process:
intermediate task fine-tuning before
final task-specific training.
Fine-tuning on a general news
dataset before a smaller domain-
specific news corpus.
Domain-
Adaptive
Pre-
Training
Additional pre-training on domain-
specific unlabeled data before task-
specific fine-tuning.
Pre-training BERT with medical
texts before fine-tuning for
medical entity recognition tasks.
Adversarial
Training
Training the model with adversarial
examples to improve robustness and
generalization.
Fine-tuning with perturbed inputs
to increase resilience against
input variations.
Multi-Task
Learning
Training on multiple tasks
simultaneously, sharing parameters
across tasks for improved results.
Combining training for text
classification and named entity
recognition (NER).
Meta-
Learning
Teaching the model to adapt quickly
to new tasks with limited data.
Using MAML for rapid fine-tuning
with a small number of training
examples.
Distillation
and
Pruning
Compressing a larger model into a
smaller one and removing redundant
weights to enhance efficiency.
Using DistilBERT as a distilled
version of BERT for faster and
smaller-scale deployments.
Parameter-
Efficient
Fine-
Tuning
Adding small, trainable modules or
using low-rank matrices to optimize
training processes.
Inserting adapters in BERT or
using LoRA for domain
adaptation.
Prompt-
Based
Fine-
Tuning
Incorporating task-specific prompts in
the input text to guide fine-tuning.
Adding prompts like “Question:
[text]” for question-answering
tasks.
Self-
Supervised
Fine-
Tuning
Using self-supervised objectives
alongside task-specific ones.
Using masked language
modeling or next sentence
prediction during task fine-tuning.
Validation and Testing
To ensure the accuracy and reliability of domain-specific LLMs for practical applications,
comprehensive validation and testing of custom-trained language models are essential:
Performance Validation

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Validate the model’s outputs using benchmarks specific to the domain, ensuring they
meet the necessary standards of accuracy and reliability.
Continuous Feedback and Iteration
Gather real-world feedback and update the model regularly to improve its effectiveness
and accuracy over time. This iterative process ensures the model remains relevant to AI
for domain-specific tasks.
Benefits of Fine-Tuned LLMs
Fine-tuning a large language model (LLM) offers numerous advantages by adapting a
pre-trained base model to address specific tasks, industries, or user needs. This process
enables organizations to leverage the full potential of LLMs with enhanced precision,
efficiency, and relevance. Below are the key benefits of fine-tuned LLMs:
1. Task-Specific Performance
Fine-tuned LLMs are optimized to excel in specific tasks, such as legal document
analysis, sentiment detection, or customer support. By training on task-relevant datasets,
these models outperform generic LLMs in producing accurate and reliable results tailored
to a given use case.
2. Higher Accuracy and Contextual Understanding
By focusing on domain-specific data, fine-tuned LLMs achieve greater contextual
understanding and produce highly accurate outputs. For example, a fine-tuned model in
the healthcare domain can interpret medical terminology more effectively, ensuring
precision in diagnoses or treatment recommendations.
3. Reduced Computational Costs
Fine-tuning builds upon a pre-trained model rather than training from scratch, significantly
reducing computational costs and development time. This makes it a more efficient way
to create customized solutions without requiring massive datasets or resources.
4. Customization and Flexibility
Fine-tuned LLMs are adaptable to the specific needs of businesses or industries.
Organizations can design models to address unique challenges, ensuring the outputs
align with their operational goals and priorities.
5. Improved Reliability and Reduced Hallucinations
Generic models can often produce fabricated or irrelevant information. Fine-tuning
minimizes such risks by training the model on highly curated and relevant datasets. This
process ensures that the model generates more consistent and trustworthy outputs.
6. Enhanced User Experience

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Fine-tuned models deliver more personalized and contextually appropriate responses,
leading to improved user satisfaction. For instance, a customer service chatbot powered
by a fine-tuned LLM can provide faster and more accurate answers to industry-specific
queries.
Challenges in Building Domain-Specific LLMs
Creating robust domain-specific LLMs requires overcoming several challenges, such as
ensuring data quality, managing scalability, and integrating interdisciplinary knowledge.
Challenge Description Solution
Data Quality
and Availability
High-quality annotated
datasets are often scarce,
particularly in regulated fields
like healthcare.
Collaborate with industry partners
to access data, use data
augmentation, and generate
synthetic datasets.
Scalability and
Cost
Management
Training and fine-tuning LLMs
require significant
computational resources and
expertise.
Use cloud-based AI platforms and
transfer learning to reduce costs
and simplify scaling.
Interdisciplinary
Integration
Domain-specific models
struggle with queries that span
multiple fields.
Develop hybrid models or multi-
domain systems to combine
expertise across various fields.
By addressing these challenges and adopting structured methodologies, organizations
can effectively fine-tune an LLM for domain-specific needs, ensuring it meets their unique
requirements with precision and efficiency.
Examples of Domain-Specific LLMs
Recognizing the limitations of general-purpose language models, industry leaders took
the initiative to develop domain-specific language models customized to their respective
fields. Here are some notable examples of domain-specific LLMs:
BloombergGPT
BloombergGPT is a causal language model built using a decoder-only architecture. With
50 billion parameters, it was trained from the ground up using decades of financial data.
This AI for domain-specific tasks excels in financial applications, outperforming other
models significantly on financial-specific tasks while matching or exceeding their
performance on general language tasks.
Med-PaLM 2
Med-PaLM 2 is a specialized model developed by Google and trained on meticulously
curated medical datasets. This domain-specific LLMs example demonstrates exceptional
accuracy in answering medical questions, sometimes performing at the level of medical

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professionals. On the MedQA dataset, which includes questions from the US Medical
Licensing Examination, Med-PaLM 2 achieved an impressive score of 86.5%.
ClimateBERT
ClimateBERT is a transformer-based model trained on millions of climate-related
datasets. Through fine-tuning, it empowers organizations to perform fact-checking and
other language tasks with greater precision on environmental data. Compared to general-
purpose models, ClimateBERT reduces errors in climate-related tasks by up to 35.7%.
KAI-GPT
KAI-GPT, developed by Kasisto, is a large language model designed to deliver
conversational AI solutions in the banking sector. It ensures safe, transparent, and
accurate applications of generative AI in customer service, making it a reliable option for
financial institutions seeking domain-specific language models.
ChatLAW
ChatLAW is an open-source language model trained specifically with datasets from the
Chinese legal domain. The model features several enhancements, including a unique
method to reduce hallucinations and improve inference accuracy, making it highly
effective for legal applications in China.
FinGPT
FinGPT is a lightweight model pre-trained with financial datasets, offering a cost-effective
alternative to BloombergGPT. This model incorporates reinforcement learning from
human feedback, allowing for further personalization. It performs exceptionally well on
financial sentiment analysis datasets, solidifying its position as one of the top examples of
domain-specific LLMs in the financial sector.
These domain-specific LLMs examples demonstrate how tailored models are pushing the
boundaries of AI for domain-specific tasks, enabling precise and effective solutions
across industries.
Use Cases for Domain-Specific LLMs

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Domain-specific large language models (LLMs) are transforming industries by offering
tailored solutions that general-purpose models struggle to provide. These models are
designed to excel in tasks requiring specialized knowledge, making them indispensable in
several fields. Here are some prominent LLMs use cases:
1. Healthcare and Medicine
Domain-specific LLMs like Med-PaLM 2 are revolutionizing medical practice. They assist
healthcare professionals by accurately interpreting medical records, answering complex
medical queries, and even supporting diagnostic decision-making. These models are also
being used in telemedicine to provide reliable and precise consultations, reducing the
workload on practitioners.
2. Finance and Banking
In the financial sector, models like BloombergGPT and FinGPT streamline data analysis,
sentiment detection, and market forecasting. Financial institutions are leveraging these
LLMs to enhance customer service, automate compliance checks, and analyze market
trends more efficiently, providing a competitive edge in decision-making.
3. Legal Services
Legal professionals benefit from domain-specific models such as ChatLAW, which are
trained on vast legal corpora to assist in drafting contracts, summarizing case laws, and
identifying potential legal risks. These models also help in regulatory compliance by
cross-referencing laws and regulations specific to a jurisdiction.
4. Environmental Studies

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Climate-focused models like ClimateBERT empower researchers and organizations to
analyze climate data, verify facts, and generate reports on environmental issues. By
minimizing errors in climate-related tasks, these models enable more accurate decision-
making for sustainability initiatives and policy development.
5. Customer Support and Chatbots
Custom models like KAI-GPT are transforming customer support in industries such as
banking, retail, and telecommunications. These LLMs deliver industry-specific
conversational AI solutions that understand domain-specific terminology, ensuring
accurate responses and a better customer experience.
6. Research and Academia
Researchers across domains use tailored LLMs to extract insights from vast datasets,
automate literature reviews, and assist in drafting research papers. These models
accelerate the research process while maintaining high levels of precision in domain-
specific outputs.
7. Content Creation and Marketing
Companies are utilizing domain-specific LLMs to generate targeted content that
resonates with specific audiences. For example, an LLM trained in fashion or technology
can create blog posts, social media content, or product descriptions that align with the
industry’s language and trends.
By focusing on the unique needs of specific fields, domain-specific LLMs are driving
innovation and enabling organizations to solve complex problems with unparalleled
accuracy and efficiency.
Benefits of Domain-Specific LLMs
Domain-specific large language models (LLMs) are redefining how industries tackle
specialized tasks. By tailoring language models to specific fields, businesses, and
professionals gain significant advantages over using general-purpose models. Here are
the key benefits:
1. Improved Accuracy and Relevance
Domain-specific LLMs are trained on curated datasets unique to their respective
industries. This specialization enables them to provide highly accurate and contextually
relevant outputs, reducing the risk of errors that general models might produce in
specialized tasks, such as medical diagnostics or legal document analysis.
2. Enhanced Efficiency
Tailored models streamline complex workflows by automating repetitive and knowledge-
intensive tasks. Whether summarizing financial reports, extracting legal clauses, or
analyzing climate data, these models save time and resources, allowing experts to focus

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on strategic decision-making.
3. Better Decision Support
By delivering outputs that align with domain-specific requirements, these LLMs support
better decision-making. For instance, financial LLMs can provide precise market insights,
while healthcare models can aid in diagnosis and treatment planning, offering valuable
assistance to professionals.
4. Reduced Hallucinations
Unlike general-purpose models that often generate irrelevant or fabricated information,
domain-specific LLMs are less prone to hallucinations. With focused training data and
domain-specific safeguards, they deliver more reliable results, especially in critical
applications such as law, finance, or healthcare.
5. Customization for Unique Needs
Domain-specific LLMs allow organizations to tailor models to their exact requirements.
Customization enables businesses to address niche challenges, ensuring the model
aligns with their operational goals and industry standards.
6. Increased User Trust and Adoption
When outputs are accurate and relevant, users develop greater trust in the technology.
This trust fosters higher adoption rates of domain-specific solutions, as users feel
confident in relying on the model for critical tasks and insights.
7. Cost-Effective Solutions for Specialized Tasks
By focusing only on relevant datasets and use cases, domain-specific LLMs reduce
computational costs compared to deploying overly generalized models. This makes them
a cost-effective choice for businesses seeking specialized AI-driven solutions.
Domain-specific LLMs not only address the limitations of generic models but also open up
new possibilities for industry-specific innovation, making them indispensable in fields
where precision and expertise are paramount.
Best Practices for Training an LLM
Training and fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) is a complex process that involves
addressing both ethical and technical challenges. Teams must manage computational
costs, leverage domain expertise, and ensure the model achieves the desired accuracy.
Mistakes made during the training process can propagate throughout the entire pipeline,
impacting the final application. These best practices will help guide your efforts when
training a domain-specific LLM or custom LLMs for specialized applications.
Start Small

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Avoid being overly ambitious when developing a model. Instead of targeting multiple use
cases, focus on training the LLM for a specific task. For example, train a custom LLM to
enhance customer service as a product-aware chatbot. Deploy the tailored model and
only scale further if it proves successful in its initial application.
Understand Scaling Laws
Scaling laws in deep learning examine the relationship between compute power, dataset
size, and the number of parameters in a language model. OpenAI initiated this research
in 2020 to predict a model’s performance before training, recognizing that building a large
LLM, such as GPT, requires substantial time and cost.
Key insights from scaling laws include:
Larger models outperform smaller ones when trained on the same dataset and
reach desired performance levels faster.
Expanding a model’s architecture has a greater impact on performance than simply
increasing the dataset size, provided sufficient compute resources are available.
However, DeepMind’s 2022 research challenged these findings, showing that both model
size and dataset size are equally important in enhancing the performance of AI for
domain-specific tasks.
Prioritize Data Quality
High-quality, domain-specific training data is essential for creating an effective domain-
specific LLM. Training data must represent the diversity of real-world scenarios to prevent
bias and ensure generalizability. For instance, financial institutions should train credit
scoring models with datasets that reflect the demographics of their customer base to
avoid deploying biased systems that may misjudge credit applications.
Whether building a model from scratch or fine-tuning an existing one, ML teams should
ensure datasets are free of noise, inconsistencies, and duplicates. Proper data
preparation is critical to achieving fairness and accuracy in the model’s predictions.
Enforce Data Security and Privacy
The massive datasets used to train or fine-tune custom LLMs present significant privacy
risks. Threats to the machine learning pipeline, such as data breaches, could harm an
organization’s reputation and compromise user privacy.
Organizations must adopt stringent data security measures, such as encrypting sensitive
data during storage and transmission. These practices are also essential for compliance
with industry regulations like HIPAA and PCI-DSS.
Monitor and Evaluate Model Performance

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Once an LLM is deployed, ongoing monitoring is essential to ensure it meets real-world
expectations and adheres to established benchmarks. If the model underperforms or
exhibits issues such as bias or underfitting, it should be refined with additional training
data, adjusted hyperparameters, or updated training processes.
Continuous evaluation allows AI for domain-specific tasks to remain effective and relevant
in dynamic environments, ensuring it adapts to changing requirements and real-world
circumstances.
By following these best practices, teams can successfully train and fine-tune domain-
specific LLMs, ensuring their models are accurate, reliable, and aligned with the unique
needs of their application.
The Bottom Line
Domain-specific LLMs are more suited to knowledge-specific activities. Leading artificial
intelligence vendors are aware of the limits of general language models in particular
applications. They created domain-specific models, such as BloombergGPT, Med-PaLM
2, and ClimateBERT, to fulfill specialized jobs. A comparison of LLM performance shows
that domain-specific models excel at uncovering financial opportunities, increasing
operational efficiency, and upgrading the consumer experience. The insights gained from
several industry-specific LLMs highlight the significance of customized training and fine-
tuning. Organizations that use high-quality, domain-specific data may dramatically
improve the capabilities and efficiency of their AI models.
SoluLab, a leading LLM development company, recently launched an AI-powered chatbot
for travel recommendations in partnership with Digital Quest. The chatbot is designed to
provide seamless communication and personalized travel suggestions, enhancing the
experience for travelers.
At SoluLab, we specialize in creating AI solutions customized to your business needs.
From building intelligent chatbots to streamlining customer interactions and improving
operational efficiency, our team is ready to help bring your vision to life. Contact us today
to get started!
FAQs
1. What is a domain-specific LLM, and why is it important?
A domain-specific LLM (Large Language Model) is a language model fine-tuned on
specialized data relevant to a particular industry or niche. It improves accuracy,
relevance, and performance for tasks within that domain, making it ideal for use cases
like healthcare, finance, or legal applications.
2. How do you fine-tune a pre-trained LLM for a specific domain?

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To fine-tune a pre-trained LLM, gather a high-quality, domain-specific dataset and use
transfer learning techniques. This involves training the model on the specialized data
while keeping the pre-trained knowledge as a base, thus adapting it to the target domain.
3. What types of data are required to train domain-specific LLMs?
Training domain-specific LLMs requires clean, high-quality, and labeled domain-specific
datasets. Examples include research papers, technical documents, industry reports,
FAQs, or other structured and unstructured textual content relevant to the domain.
4. How do you evaluate the performance of a domain-specific LLM?
Performance can be evaluated using domain-specific benchmarks, accuracy metrics
(e.g., BLEU, ROUGE), and real-world testing for tasks like classification, summarization,
or question-answering. Human evaluation within the domain also ensures relevance and
precision.
5. What are the benefits of building domain-specific LLMs instead of using general-
purpose LLMs?
Domain-specific LLMs offer higher accuracy, relevance, and efficiency for specialized
tasks. Unlike general-purpose LLMs, they understand domain-specific terminology,
context, and nuances, delivering better results for niche use cases.