Evaluation Methodology

A repeatable, engineering-led evaluation workflow designed to uncover failure boundaries, quantify regression risks, and produce actionable remediation for production AI systems.

Version 2.0 · Tri-Modal Rubrics · Continuous Regression Defense Loop

Six-Stage Evaluation

We execute a structured pipeline rather than ad-hoc spot checks. Every phase produces documented artifacts.

01

Define

Formulate formal task definitions, input schemas, required output structure, and explicit pass/fail criteria. All evaluation rubrics and deterministic assertions are locked in before looking at candidate outputs to ensure unbiased measurement.

PHASE 1
02

Prepare

Curate, clean, balance, and version-control evaluation datasets. We intentionally mine hard-negatives, out-of-distribution inputs, and edge-case boundary conditions to stress-test systems where real-world failures happen.

PHASE 2
03

Run

Execute candidate models inside isolated sandboxes or private VPC harnesses. Parameters including temperature, random seeds, top-p, and context windows are strictly controlled, with full input-output request telemetry logged.

PHASE 3
04

Analyze

Score outputs using our tri-modal grading system (deterministic unit assertions, calibrated model judges, and human domain experts). Failures are categorized into concrete taxonomies: retrieval omissions, reasoning loops, schema violations, or hallucinations.

PHASE 4
05

Improve

Translate empirical failure analysis into engineering remediation: prompt tuning, chunking adjustments, tool parameter schema revisions, or targeted fine-tuning datasets for supervised alignment.

PHASE 5
06

Re-Evaluate (Regression Defense)

Execute the frozen evaluation suite against updated model checkpoints. This guarantees that remediations addressing specific errors do not cause silent degradation across previously passing capabilities.

PHASE 6

Tri-Modal Evaluation

Why relying solely on "LLM-as-a-judge" is insufficient for enterprise systems.

1. Deterministic Checks

Code execution in Docker, regex schema matching, JSON/SQL parse tests, and exact numeric assertions. Zero grader subjectivity.

2. Calibrated LLM Judges

Few-shot rubrics for semantic alignment, factual groundedness, and tone conformity. Continuously cross-calibrated against human consensus.

3. Human Domain Experts

Software engineers, legal researchers, and domain specialists audit borderline cases, prompt injections, and complex multi-hop outputs.

Documentation Stack

What engineering teams receive at the conclusion of every evaluation engagement.

01
Evaluation Plan & Rubric Specification

Locked task definitions, assertion logic, scoring guidelines, and baseline configurations.

02
Versioned Evaluation Dataset

Standardized JSONL dataset with inputs, reference ground-truths, and categorized edge cases.

03
Full Telemetry & Log Traces

Complete request/response traces, token counts, latency bounds, and step-level agent tool logs.

04
Executive & Technical Evaluation Report

Metric summaries, baseline comparisons, failure taxonomy breakdowns, and engineering remediation guidance.

05
Automated Regression Test Suite

Packaged test harness and scripts for continuous CI/CD evaluation on subsequent model updates.

Implement Regression Defense for Your AI

Schedule an evaluation consultation with our engineering team under mutual NDA.

Direct inquiries: ai@acadifysolution.com