Evaluation Dataset

An evaluation dataset is the collection of examples — prompts, conversations, tasks — that you run your model against to measure its behavior. A good evaluation dataset is representative of real usage, covers the edge cases and failure modes you most care about, and has reliable labels or reference outputs to score against. Building and maintaining an evaluation dataset is ongoing work: as your product evolves, so do the scenarios that matter. For behavior architects, the evaluation dataset is as important as any training data — it’s how you know whether your model is actually improving, and it gives your team a shared ground for discussing behavioral quality rather than relying on individual intuitions.