AI Glossary
Checkpoint
What does “Checkpoint” mean?
Checkpoint: A saved snapshot of a model's weights at a particular point in training, often together with the optimizer's state. Checkpoints let teams resume after crashes, compare progress over time and roll back if later training makes the model worse.

What is an example of “Checkpoint”?
EleutherAI's Pythia project published many intermediate checkpoints so researchers could study how abilities develop during training.