Skip to content
All articles

Technical Note

Designing a Small Evaluation Set

Md Shamim Hossain October 14, 2026 1 min read 68 words

Twenty good cases beat two hundred borrowed ones. How to build evals you will actually maintain.

Write cases from your own failures

Every evaluation case should trace back to something that went wrong, or
nearly did, in real use. Borrowed benchmarks measure somebody else's risk.

One assertion per case

A case that checks three things tells you nothing when it fails. Split it.

Version the grader with the data

When the pass condition changes, old scores stop meaning the same thing.
Record which grader produced which number.

Enter your credentials to continue to your workspace.
Email address
Remember me
Don't have an account? Sign up
Enter your details below to create your account
Name
Email address
Password
Confirm password
Already have an account? Log in
Enter your email and we will send you a reset link
Email address
Or, return to log in