MLOps Package Template: Turbocharge the Creation of AI/ML Projects ⚡

Médéric Hurier (Fmind)
4 min readAug 5, 2024

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The world of AI/ML is evolving at an electrifying pace, and MLOps has emerged as a cornerstone for translating innovative ideas into production-ready solutions. Yet, setting up a robust MLOps project can feel like navigating a labyrinth of tools, configurations, and best practices. This is where the Cookiecutter MLOps Package steps in, offering a powerful code template to jumpstart your MLOps journey, accelerating your development process and ensuring a solid foundation for success.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

Why Code Templates Matter 💡

Think of a code template as a blueprint for success. It provides a standardized structure and pre-configured tools, eliminating the need for repetitive setup tasks and allowing you to focus on the core problem you’re trying to solve. This streamlined approach not only saves valuable time and effort but also promotes consistency and adherence to best practices across multiple projects.

The Cookiecutter MLOps Package: Built for Versatility ⚙️

The Cookiecutter MLOps Package is designed with a platform-agnostic philosophy, recognizing that the fundamental principles of packaging and deployment are applicable across various MLOps environments. Whether you’re working with Kubernetes, Vertex AI, Databricks, Azure ML, or AWS SageMaker, the template provides a common foundation, empowering you to integrate your code seamlessly into your preferred platform.

A Powerful Toolkit at Your Fingertips 🧰

The Cookiecutter MLOps Package equips you with an arsenal of tools and features to enhance your MLOps development:

  • Streamlined Project Structure: Say goodbye to chaotic project setups. The template provides a well-defined directory structure for your code, tests, documentation, and more.
  • Dependency Management with Poetry: Effortlessly manage your Python dependencies and build your package with Poetry, ensuring a consistent and reproducible environment.
  • Automated Testing and Quality Checks: Enjoy a robust testing framework with Pytest, Ruff, Mypy, Bandit, and Coverage, guaranteeing code quality, style, security, and type safety.
  • Pre-commit Hooks: Automatically format and lint your code with pre-commit hooks, enforcing coding standards and preventing regressions.
  • MLflow Integration: Seamlessly execute your jobs using MLflow projects, enabling easy experimentation, tracking, and reproducibility.
  • Dockerized Deployment: Build and run your package within a Docker container, ensuring consistency and portability across different environments.
  • PyInvoke for Task Automation: Automate repetitive development tasks with PyInvoke, streamlining your workflow and saving time.
  • Comprehensive Documentation: Generate API documentation with pdoc and leverage Markdown files for clear usage instructions.
  • GitHub Actions for CI/CD: Set up continuous integration and deployment workflows with GitHub Actions, automating testing, checks, and publishing.

The MLOps Ecosystem: Course, Package, and Template 🔌

The Cookiecutter MLOps Package is part of a broader ecosystem designed to empower ML practitioners:

  • MLOps Coding Course: This comprehensive course dives deep into software development best practices for AI/ML, providing the foundational knowledge to structure and manage MLOps projects effectively.
  • MLOps Python Package: This companion repository showcases a practical implementation of the concepts and best practices discussed in the course on a Predictive ML project.

Getting Started with the Cookiecutter MLOps Package🔋

To get started, install Cookiecutter and generate your MLOps project:

pip install cookiecutter
cookiecutter gh:fmind/cookiecutter-mlops-package

You’ll be prompted to provide values for the following variables:

user = "your-github-username"
name = "Your Project Name"
repository = "your-project-repository"
package = "your_project_package"
license = "MIT"
version = "0.1.0"
description = "A brief description of your project"
python_version = "3.12"
mlflow_version = "2.14.3"

Then, initialize a git repository and activate the GitHub pages workflow:

cd your-project-repository
git init

Showcasing Automated Tasks ✨

The Cookiecutter MLOps Package empowers you to automate various development tasks using PyInvoke. Here are some examples:

Install Dependencies:

This task installs all project dependencies using Poetry and sets up pre-commit hooks.

invoke installs

Format Code:

This task automatically formats your code using Ruff, ensuring consistent style.

invoke formats

Run Tests and Checks:

This task runs unit tests with Pytest, lints your code with Ruff, performs type checks with Mypy, analyzes code security with Bandit, and generates a code coverage report with Coverage.

invoke checks

Build Python Package:

This task builds your Python package as a wheel file, ready for distribution.

invoke packages

Run an MLflow Project:

This task executes your MLflow project, as defined in your MLproject file.

invoke projects

Build and Run Docker Image:

This task builds your Docker image based on your Dockerfile and runs it in a container.

invoke containers

The Power of Templates: Embrace Efficiency and Quality 💪

The Cookiecutter MLOps Package is more than just a time-saver; it’s a quality enhancer, ensuring that every project you start adheres to best practices and is built on a solid foundation. By leveraging this template, you can:

  • Accelerate Development: Focus on the unique aspects of your project, not the repetitive setup tasks.
  • Enhance Consistency: Promote uniformity and best practices across all your projects.
  • Boost Collaboration: Create a shared development environment for your team, reducing setup time and confusion.
  • Improve Maintainability: Create structured and well-documented projects that are easier to maintain and update.

Embark on your MLOps journey with the Cookiecutter MLOps Package and experience the power of templates to streamline your development process and elevate your AI/ML projects to new heights.

Photo by Jan Huber on Unsplash

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Médéric Hurier (Fmind)

Freelancer: AI/ML/MLOps Engineer | Data Scientist | Python Developer | MLOps Community Organizer | MLOps Coding Course Author | MLflow Ambassador | Hacker | PhD