Llm Evaluation
Deep LLM evaluation workflow—quality dimensions, golden sets, human vs automatic metrics, regression suites, offline/online signals, and safe rollout gates f...
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SKILL.md
LLM Evaluation (Deep Workflow)
Evaluation turns “it feels better” into reproducible evidence. Design around failure modes your product cares about—not only aggregate scores.
When to Offer This Workflow
Trigger conditions:
- Prompt or model change; need before/after proof
- Building CI for LLM outputs; flaky quality in production
- RAG/agents: grounding, tool use, safety regressions
Initial offer:
Use six stages: (1) define quality & constraints, (2) build datasets & rubrics, (3) automatic metrics, (4) human evaluation, (5) regression & gates, (6) online validation & iteration. Confirm latency/cost budgets and risk (PII, safety).
Stage 1: Define Quality & Constraints
Goal: Name dimensions that map to user harm if they fail.
Typical dimensions (pick what matters)
- Correctness / task success; groundedness (RAG); faithfulness to sources
- Safety: policy violations, jailbreaks, PII leakage
- Style: tone, brevity, format (when product-critical)
- Robustness: paraphrase, multilingual, edge inputs
Constraints
- Max tokens, latency p95, cost per request; locale requirements
Exit condition: Weighted priority of dimensions; non-goals stated.
Stage 2: Datasets & Rubrics
Goal: Fixed eval sets + clear scoring rules.
Practices
- Stratify by intent: easy/medium/hard; adversarial slice separate
- Rubrics: 1–5 scales with anchors; binary checks for safety
- Version datasets (git or table); no silent edits without changelog
- Privacy: synthetic or redacted real examples per policy
Exit condition: Golden set size justified; inter-rater plan if human scoring.
Stage 3: Automatic Metrics
Goal: Fast signals—know limitations.
Options
- Reference-based: BLEU/ROUGE—often weak for assistants
- Model-as-judge: fast, biased—calibrate vs human
- Task-specific: exact match, JSON schema validity, tool-call args match
- RAG: citation overlap, nugget recall, entailment models (use carefully)
Hygiene
- No training on test; detect leakage from prompts
Exit condition: Each auto metric has known blind spots documented.
Stage 4: Human Evaluation
Goal: Authoritative judgment where automatic metrics lie.
Design
- Sample size for confidence; blind A/B when possible
- Guidelines + examples; adjudication for disagreements
- Locale-native raters when language quality matters
Exit condition: Human scores correlate enough with auto for ongoing monitoring—or you rely on human for release.
Stage 5: Regression & Gates
Goal: Block bad deploys in CI or release pipeline.
Gates
- Must-pass suites: safety, critical user journeys
- Trend tracking: not only point-in-time
- Canary with online metrics (see Stage 6)
Artifacts
- Report: model/prompt id, dataset versions, scores, diff
Exit condition: Rollback criteria defined before rollout.
Stage 6: Online Validation
Goal: Production truth—shadow, A/B, or gradual ramp.
Signals
- Implicit: thumbs, edits, task completion, support tickets
- Explicit: user ratings (sparse)
Causality
- Confounds: seasonality, cohort—control where possible
Final Review Checklist
- Quality dimensions prioritized for the product
- Versioned eval sets and rubrics
- Auto + human roles explicit; limitations documented
- Release gates and rollback tied to metrics
- Plan for online feedback loop
Tips for Effective Guidance
- Slice metrics—averages hide regressions on critical intents.
- For agents, evaluate trajectories, not only final text.
- Never claim objective truth—evaluation is operationalized judgment.
Handling Deviations
- No labels: start with smallest pairwise comparison set + spot human review.
- High-stakes (medical/legal): human-in-the-loop gate; disclaim limits of auto eval.
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