---
title: Basic skills
description: >-
  Learn the basics of model development with Lightning. Researchers and machine
  learning engineers should start here.
canonical: 'https://lightning.ai/docs/pytorch/stable/level-up/core_skills'
---
# Basic skills {#basic-skills}

Learn the basics of model development with Lightning. Researchers and machine learning engineers should start here.

- [Level 1: Train a model](/docs/pytorch/2.6.6/reference/model/train_model_basic.md) — Learn the basics of training a model.

- [Level 2: Add a validation and test set](/docs/pytorch/2.6.6/level-up/core_skills/basic_level_2.md) — Add validation and test sets to avoid over/underfitting.

- [Level 3: Use pretrained models](/docs/pytorch/2.6.6/reference/advanced/transfer_learning.md) — Learn how to use pretrained models with Lightning

- [Level 4: Enable script parameters](/docs/pytorch/2.6.6/reference/common/hyperparameters.md) — Add parameters to your script so you can run from the commandline.

- [Level 5: Understand and visualize your model](/docs/pytorch/2.6.6/level-up/core_skills/basic_level_5.md) — Remove bottlenecks and visualize your model

- [Level 6: Predict with your model](/docs/pytorch/2.6.6/level-up/core_skills/core_level_6.md) — Use your model for predictions.

---

**Navigation**

- Parent: [Level Up](/docs/pytorch/2.6.6/level-up.md)
- Children:
  - [Level 2: Add a validation and test set](/docs/pytorch/2.6.6/level-up/core_skills/basic_level_2.md)
  - [Level 5: Debug, visualize and find performance bottlenecks](/docs/pytorch/2.6.6/level-up/core_skills/basic_level_5.md)
  - [Level 6: Predict with your model](/docs/pytorch/2.6.6/level-up/core_skills/core_level_6.md)