Evaluation, Testing & Optimization·Task 4.1·Bloom: understand·Difficulty 2/5·8 min read·Updated 2026-07-14

Evals as Pre-Build Acceptance Criteria

Define evaluation metrics (accuracy, latency, cost, safety, security)

SUBy Solomon UdohReviewed by Solomon UdohAI-assisted · human-reviewed
In short
Evals as acceptance criteria means the evaluation suite is defined at the start of the build, before production code is written, so success is stated in measurable terms up front. Writing evals first forces the team to name what good looks like, exposes design assumptions while they are still cheap to change, and creates the gate that every later model swap, prompt revision, or retrieval change must pass. If a behavior cannot be expressed as an eval, there is no reliable way to verify it changed.

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