How to Build Great Evals: A Laddered Strategy Guide
realmadhuguru · x · 2026-08-21
Addressing the lack of evaluation strategies in enterprises, this post proposes a laddered evaluation framework:
- Hill-climb evals: Push the product frontier, requiring constant refreshment for quality improvement.
- Regression evals: Ensure existing features aren't broken while climbing.
- Smoke test evals: Basic safety checks to prevent fundamental errors (e.g., product identity).
- Launch evals: Pre-launch tests close to real-world traffic.
This strategy balances cost and realism.
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