IFBench-VERL: Instruction Following Evaluation Dataset for VERL Training

Overview

IFBench-VERL is a comprehensive instruction-following evaluation dataset formatted for VERL (Versatile Reinforcement Learning) training pipelines. This dataset contains 95,373 high-quality examples with 54 different constraint types, enabling systematic training and evaluation of instruction-following capabilities in language models.

The dataset is converted from allenai/IF_multi_constraints_upto5 into VERL-compatible format with integrated IFEval-based reward modeling for automatic constraint verification.

Key Statistics

• Total Examples: 95,373
• Format: Parquet (VERL-compatible)
• Data Source: allenai/IF_multi_constraints_upto5
• License: ODC-BY-1.0 (Open Data Commons Attribution License)
• Conversion Date: November 3, 2025
• Constraint Types: 54 different instruction-following constraints
• Constraint Categories: 13 (keywords, language, length, content, format, punctuation, etc.)
• Max Constraints per Example: Up to 5 constraints
• Reward Model: IFEval-based automatic evaluation

Dataset Structure

Schema

The dataset follows the VERL standard schema format:

{
    'data_source': 'allenai/IF_multi_constraints_upto5',
    'prompt': [
        {
            'role': 'system',
            'content': 'You are a helpful assistant...'
        },
        {
            'role': 'user',
            'content': 'Write a paragraph about...'
        }
    ],
    'ability': 'instruction_following',
    'reward_model': {
        'style': 'ifeval',
        'ground_truth': '[{"instruction_id": ["keywords:existence"], "kwargs": [{"keywords": ["example", "test"]}]}]'
    },
    'extra_info': {
        'index': 0
    },
    'dataset': 'ifeval'
}

Field Descriptions

Field	Type	Description
data_source	string	Original dataset identifier
prompt	list[dict]	Conversation with system and user messages containing instruction-following constraints
ability	string	Task category (always "instruction_following")
reward_model.style	string	Reward model type (always "ifeval")
reward_model.ground_truth	string	JSON-encoded constraint specifications for automatic evaluation
extra_info.index	int	Original example index from source dataset
dataset	string	Dataset identifier for GRPO verifier routing (always "ifeval")

Instruction Following Tasks

This dataset tests 54 different constraint types across 13 major categories:

Constraint Categories

1. Keywords (8 constraints)

   • keywords:existence - Require specific keywords
   • keywords:frequency - Control keyword frequency
   • keywords:forbidden_words - Prohibit certain words
   • keywords:letter_frequency - Control letter frequency
   • keywords:no_adjacent_consecutive - Prevent adjacent letters
   • keywords:word_once - Require words exactly once
   • keywords:palindrome - Require palindrome words
   • keywords:keyword_specific_position - Place keywords at specific positions
   • keywords:start_end - Require start/end with specific text

2. Language (1 constraint)

   • language:response_language - Require response in specific language

3. Length Constraints (4 constraints)

   • length_constraints:number_sentences - Control sentence count
   • length_constraints:number_paragraphs - Control paragraph count
   • length_constraints:number_words - Control word count
   • length_constraints:nth_paragraph_first_word - Control specific paragraph's first word

4. Detectable Content (2 constraints)

   • detectable_content:number_placeholders - Require placeholders (e.g., [NAME])
   • detectable_content:postscript - Require postscript section

5. Detectable Format (8 constraints)

   • detectable_format:number_bullet_lists - Require bullet lists
   • detectable_format:constrained_response - Constrain response format
   • detectable_format:number_highlighted_sections - Require highlighted sections
   • detectable_format:multiple_sections - Require multiple sections
   • detectable_format:json_format - Require JSON format
   • detectable_format:title - Require title
   • detectable_format:sentence_hyphens - Require sentence with hyphens
   • detectable_format:square_brackets - Require square brackets
   • detectable_format:bigram_wrapping - Require bigram wrapping

6. Combination (2 constraints)

   • combination:two_responses - Require two separate responses
   • combination:repeat_prompt - Repeat prompt then answer

7. Start/End (2 constraints)

   • startend:end_checker - Control response ending
   • startend:quotation - Wrap response in quotation marks

8. Change Case (3 constraints)

   • change_case:capital_word_frequency - Control capitalized word frequency
   • change_case:english_capital - All uppercase
   • change_case:english_lowercase - All lowercase

9. Punctuation (4 constraints)

   • punctuation:no_comma - Prohibit commas
   • punctuation:punctuation_dot - End sentences with periods
   • punctuation:punctuation_exclamation - Use exclamation marks

10. Copy (4 constraints)

    • copy:repeat_phrase - Repeat specific phrase
    • copy:copy - Copy from prompt
    • copy:copying_simple - Simple copying task
    • copy:copying_multiple - Multiple copying operations

11. Paragraphs (2 constraints)

    • paragraphs:paragraphs - Basic paragraph structure
    • paragraphs:paragraphs2 - Alternative paragraph structure

12. First/Last Word (4 constraints)

    • first_word:first_word_sent - Control first word of sentence
    • first_word:first_word_answer - Control first word of answer
    • last_word:last_word_sent - Control last word of sentence
    • last_word:last_word_answer - Control last word of answer

13. Count (6 constraints)

    • count:lowercase_counting - Count lowercase letters
    • count:counting_composition - Counting composition
    • count:count_unique - Count unique elements
    • count:count_increment_word - Count with incremental words
    • letters:letter_counting - Count specific letters
    • letters:letter_counting2 - Alternative letter counting

Reward Model

IFEval-Based Automatic Evaluation

The dataset uses IFEval (Instruction Following Evaluation) for automatic constraint verification. Each example includes:

• Constraint Specification: JSON-encoded list of constraints with parameters
• Automatic Checking: Self-contained scorer in the datatrove library
• Binary Scoring: Each constraint is either satisfied (1.0) or not (0.0)
• Average Score: Final score is the average across all constraints

Ground Truth Format

The reward_model.ground_truth field contains JSON-encoded constraint specifications:

[
  {
    "instruction_id": [
      "keywords:existence",
      "length_constraints:number_words"
    ],
    "kwargs": [
      {"keywords": ["example", "test"]},
      {"num_words": 100, "relation": "at least"}
    ]
  }
]

Self-Contained Scorer

The IFEval scorer is included in the datatrove library at datatrove.utils.reward_score.ifeval:

from datatrove.utils.reward_score.ifeval import compute_score

# Evaluate model output against constraints
result = compute_score(
    model_output="Your model's response...",
    ground_truth='[{"instruction_id": [...], "kwargs": [...]}]'
)

# Result format
{
    "score": 0.85,  # Average success rate across all constraints
    "reward_fmt": 1.0,
    "reward_think": 1.0
}

Data Access

Using HuggingFace Datasets

from datasets import load_dataset

# Load the full dataset
dataset = load_dataset("sungyub/ifbench-verl", split="train")

# Example usage
example = dataset[0]
print(f"Prompt: {example['prompt']}")
print(f"Constraints: {example['reward_model']['ground_truth']}")

Using Pandas

import pandas as pd

# Load as pandas DataFrame
df = pd.read_parquet("hf://datasets/sungyub/ifbench-verl/train-00000-of-00001.parquet")

# View statistics
print(df.info())
print(df.head())

Using Polars

import polars as pl

# Load with Polars for faster processing
df = pl.read_parquet("hf://datasets/sungyub/ifbench-verl/train-00000-of-00001.parquet")

print(df.describe())

Technical Details

Metadata Standards

This dataset includes metadata following:

• ML Commons Croissant 1.1: Structured dataset metadata
• VERL Format: Compatible with VERL training pipelines
• IFEval Integration: Self-contained constraint checking

Supported Libraries

• datasets (HuggingFace)
• pandas
• polars
• dask

Dependencies for Reward Scoring

To use the IFEval reward scorer, install:

pip install datatrove[reward_scoring]

# Or install specific dependencies:
pip install langdetect immutabledict nltk

Use Cases

1. Instruction Following Training

Train language models to better follow complex instructions with multiple constraints:

from datasets import load_dataset

dataset = load_dataset("sungyub/ifbench-verl", split="train")

# Use for supervised fine-tuning or RL training
for example in dataset:
    prompt = example['prompt']
    constraints = example['reward_model']['ground_truth']
    # Train your model...

2. VERL/GRPO Training

Direct integration with VERL training pipelines:

# The 'dataset' field enables automatic verifier routing in GRPO
# The reward model automatically uses IFEval scoring

3. Benchmark Evaluation

Evaluate model instruction-following capabilities across 54 constraint types:

from datatrove.utils.reward_score.ifeval import compute_score

# Evaluate model output
score = compute_score(
    model_output=model_response,
    ground_truth=example['reward_model']['ground_truth']
)

print(f"Instruction following score: {score['score']:.2%}")

4. Constraint Analysis

Analyze which constraint types are most challenging:

import json

# Group by constraint types
constraint_stats = {}
for example in dataset:
    gt = json.loads(example['reward_model']['ground_truth'])
    for constraint_id in gt[0]['instruction_id']:
        category = constraint_id.split(':')[0]
        constraint_stats[category] = constraint_stats.get(category, 0) + 1

print(constraint_stats)

Citation and License

License

This dataset is licensed under ODC-BY-1.0 (Open Data Commons Attribution License), following the original dataset's license terms. You are free to:

• Share and redistribute the dataset
• Adapt and modify the dataset
• Use the dataset commercially

Under the condition of:

• Attribution: You must give appropriate credit to the original dataset creators

Citation

If you use this dataset, please cite the original IF dataset:

@misc{if_multi_constraints_upto5,
  title={IF Multi-Constraints (Up to 5)},
  author={AI2},
  publisher={Hugging Face},
  url={https://huggingface.co/datasets/allenai/IF_multi_constraints_upto5},
  year={2024}
}

And this VERL-formatted version:

@misc{ifbench_verl,
  title={IFBench-VERL: Instruction Following Evaluation Dataset for VERL Training},
  author={Sungyub Kim},
  publisher={Hugging Face},
  url={https://huggingface.co/datasets/sungyub/ifbench-verl},
  year={2025}
}

Responsible Use

This dataset is intended for research and educational purposes in accordance with:

• AI2's Responsible Use Guidelines
• Open Data Commons Attribution License terms

Please ensure ethical use of this dataset and be mindful of potential biases in instruction-following evaluation.

Additional Resources

• Original Dataset: allenai/IF_multi_constraints_upto5
• IFEval Paper: Instruction-Following Evaluation
• VERL Documentation: VERL Training Guide
• Datatrove Library: HuggingFace Datatrove

Contact

For questions or issues regarding this dataset conversion, please open an issue on the dataset repository.