anthropic-evaluations
This skill should be used when the user asks to "create evals", "evaluate an agent", "build evaluation suite", or mentions agent testing, graders, or benchmarks. Also suggest when building coding agents, conversational agents, or research agents that need quality assurance.
What this skill does
# Anthropic Evaluations
Build rigorous evaluations for AI agents using Anthropic's proven patterns.
## Quick Reference
You MUST read the reference files for detailed guidance:
- [Grader Types](./references/grader-types.md) - Code-based, model-based, human graders
- [Agent Type Patterns](./references/agent-type-patterns.md) - Coding, conversational, research, computer use
- [Roadmap](./references/roadmap.md) - Steps 0-8 for building evals from scratch
- [Frameworks](./references/frameworks.md) - Harbor, Promptfoo, Braintrust, etc.
**YAML Templates:**
- [coding-agent-eval.yaml](./references/coding-agent-eval.yaml) - Coding agent template
- [conversational-agent-eval.yaml](./references/conversational-agent-eval.yaml) - Support agent template
**Annotated Examples:**
- [Example: Coding Agent](./references/example-coding-agent.md) - Auth bypass fix walkthrough
- [Example: Conversational](./references/example-conversational.md) - Refund handling walkthrough
## Core Definitions
| Term | Definition |
|------|------------|
| **Task** | Single test with defined inputs and success criteria |
| **Trial** | One attempt at a task (run multiple for consistency) |
| **Grader** | Logic that scores agent performance; tasks can have multiple |
| **Transcript** | Complete record of a trial (outputs, tool calls, reasoning) |
| **Outcome** | Final state in environment (not just what agent said) |
| **Evaluation harness** | Infrastructure that runs evals end-to-end |
| **Agent harness** | System enabling model to act as agent (scaffold) |
| **Evaluation suite** | Collection of tasks measuring specific capabilities |
## Grader Types (Quick Reference)
| Type | Methods | Best For |
|------|---------|----------|
| **Code-based** | String match, unit tests, static analysis, state checks | Fast, cheap, objective verification |
| **Model-based** | Rubric scoring, assertions, pairwise comparison | Nuanced, open-ended tasks |
| **Human** | SME review, A/B testing, spot-check sampling | Gold standard calibration |
See [Grader Types](./references/grader-types.md) for detailed comparison.
## Capability vs Regression Evals
| Type | Question | Target Pass Rate |
|------|----------|------------------|
| **Capability** | "What can this agent do well?" | Start low, hill-climb |
| **Regression** | "Does it still handle what it used to?" | Near 100% |
Capability evals with high pass rates "graduate" to regression suites.
## Non-Determinism Metrics
| Metric | Measures | Use When |
|--------|----------|----------|
| **pass@k** | At least 1 success in k attempts | One success matters (coding) |
| **pass^k** | All k attempts succeed | Consistency essential (customer-facing) |
Example: 75% per-trial success rate
- pass@3 ≈ 98% (likely to get at least one)
- pass^3 ≈ 42% (0.75³ all succeed)
## Tracked Metrics
```yaml
tracked_metrics:
- type: transcript
metrics: [n_turns, n_toolcalls, n_total_tokens]
- type: latency
metrics: [time_to_first_token, output_tokens_per_sec, time_to_last_token]
```
## Attribution
Based on [Demystifying evals for AI agents](https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/demystifying-evals-for-ai-agents) by Anthropic (January 2026).
Related in AI Agents
skill-development
IncludedComprehensive meta-skill for creating, managing, validating, auditing, and distributing Claude Code skills and slash commands (unified in v2.1.3+). Provides skill templates, creation workflows, validation patterns, audit checklists, naming conventions, YAML frontmatter guidance, progressive disclosure examples, and best practices lookup. Use when creating new skills, validating existing skills, auditing skill quality, understanding skill architecture, needing skill templates, learning about YAML frontmatter requirements, progressive disclosure patterns, tool restrictions (allowed-tools), skill composition, skill naming conventions, troubleshooting skill activation issues, creating custom slash commands, configuring command frontmatter, using command arguments ($ARGUMENTS, $1, $2), bash execution in commands, file references in commands, command namespacing, plugin commands, MCP slash commands, Skill tool configuration, or deciding between skills vs slash commands. Delegates to docs-management skill for official documentation.
reprompter
IncludedTransform messy prompts into well-structured, effective prompts — single or multi-agent. Use when: "reprompt", "reprompt this", "clean up this prompt", "structure my prompt", rough text needing XML tags and best practices, "reprompter teams", "repromptception", "run with quality", "smart run", "smart agents", multi-agent tasks, audits, parallel work, anything going to agent teams. Don't use when: simple Q&A, pure chat, immediate execution-only tasks. See "Don't Use When" section for details. Outputs: Structured XML/Markdown prompt, quality score (before/after), optional team brief + per-agent sub-prompts, agent team output files. Success criteria: Single mode quality score ≥ 7/10; Repromptception per-agent prompt quality score 8+/10; all required sections present, actionable and specific.
adaptive-compaction
IncludedAdaptive add-on policy and recovery layer that decides WHEN to compact, prune, snapshot, or fork -- replacing fixed-percent auto-compaction across Claude Code, Codex, and MCP-capable hosts. Trigger on auto-compact timing or damage: "when should I compact", "is it safe to compact now or start a fresh session", "auto-compact fires too early/mid-task", "switching to an unrelated task but the window still has space", "context rot", "answers get worse the longer the session runs", "the agent forgot the plan or my decisions after it summarized", "add a layer on top that manages context without changing the agent", raising autoCompactWindow to give the policy room, or installing/tuning a cross-tool compaction policy or PreCompact hook -- even when "compaction" is never said but the problem is context-window pressure or post-summarization memory loss. Do NOT use to summarize a conversation, build RAG, write a summarization prompt (decides WHEN not HOW), or answer max-context-length trivia.
agent-skill-creator
IncludedCreate cross-platform agent skills from workflow descriptions. Activates when users ask to create an agent, automate a repetitive workflow, create a custom skill, or need advanced agent creation. Triggers on phrases like create agent for, automate workflow, create skill for, every day I have to, daily I need to, turn process into agent, need to automate, create a cross-platform skill, validate this skill, export this skill, migrate this skill. Supports single skills, multi-agent suites, transcript processing, template-based creation, interactive configuration, cross-platform export, and spec validation.
llm-wiki
IncludedUse when building or maintaining a persistent personal knowledge base (second brain) in Obsidian where an LLM incrementally ingests sources, updates entity/concept pages, maintains cross-references, and keeps a synthesis current. Triggers include "second brain", "Obsidian wiki", "personal knowledge management", "ingest this paper/article/book", "build a research wiki", "compound knowledge", "Memex", or whenever the user wants knowledge to accumulate across sessions instead of being re-derived by RAG on every query.
skill-master
IncludedAgent Skills authoring, evaluation, and optimization. Create, edit, validate, benchmark, and improve skills following the agentskills.io specification. Use when designing SKILL.md files, structuring skill folders (references, scripts, assets), ingesting external documentation into skills, running trigger evals, benchmarking skill quality, optimizing descriptions, or performing blind A/B comparisons. Keywords: agentskills.io, SKILL.md, skill authoring, eval, benchmark, trigger optimization.