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07 · Sub-discipline

AI Evals + Observability

Test, trace, and keep agents honest in production.

The production-ops layer for AI systems. Eval harnesses with grounded ground truth, prompt-regression suites across model versions, trace + cost + latency tracking, guardrails on inputs and outputs, red-team batteries, and routing across providers so a single outage doesn't take you down.

What you get

4 pillars

Eval harnesses

Bounded test suites with curated ground truth — quality measured on a number, not on vibes. CI-gated thresholds before any model swap.

Trace + cost + latency

Langfuse / LangSmith / Helicone wiring — every prompt, tool call, and response captured with token cost and p50/p95 latency. Drift alerts.

Guardrails + red-team

Input filters, output filters, jailbreak detection, PII redaction. Adversarial prompt batteries run pre-deploy and on a schedule.

Model routing + fallback

Multi-provider routing with health-aware fallback (Claude → GPT → Llama). A/B routing for cost experiments without breaking quality.

Tools we reach for

Not exhaustive
LangfuseLangSmithHeliconeBraintrustOpenAI EvalsPromptFooAnthropic SDKOpenRouter

Frequently asked

4 questions

Why do I need AI evals?

LLMs are non-deterministic. Without evals, a model upgrade or prompt change can silently regress on edge cases your users hit daily. Evals turn "feels worse" into a measurable score and let you ship model changes with confidence.

How do you catch regressions when models or prompts change?

A versioned eval suite runs on every prompt or model change — golden datasets, LLM-as-judge scoring, and behavioral assertions. CI gates merges on score delta. New failures get reviewed before shipping.

Self-hosted (Langfuse) or hosted (LangSmith, Braintrust)?

Depends on data sensitivity and budget. Self-hosted Langfuse on your own infra for sensitive data and zero per-trace fees. Hosted LangSmith or Braintrust when you want zero ops and powerful analytics out of the box.

How long to set up an eval harness?

A working v1 with golden dataset, baseline metrics, and CI integration ships in 1–2 weeks. Deeper LLM-as-judge rubrics, drift detection, and prod sampling come in the next 2–4 weeks.

Sounds like the bucket you’re in?

Tell me what you’re trying to build. I’ll send a written proposal within 48 hours of our discovery call.