@tangle-network/agent-eval 0.17.3 → 0.19.0

package/docs/concepts.md

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+# Concepts
+
+Read this once and the rest of agent-eval makes sense.
+
+## What is agent-eval?
+
+A library for **deciding whether a code generator or content generator did its job.** You give it a thing the generator produced (a scaffold, a patch, a tweet, a JSON config), and you get back a structured verdict: pass/fail, dimension scores, a reason in plain English.
+
+It exists because LLMs lie about whether they succeeded. A model will say "Done!" and ship code that doesn't compile. agent-eval is the layer between the model's output and your decision to ship.
+
+## The three things you'll touch most
+
+| Thing | What it is | One-line example |
+|---|---|---|
+| **Judge** | A function that scores one piece of output. | "Did this scaffold implement async fetching?" |
+| **Rubric** | The recipe a judge uses — what to score on, with what weights. | "Score on buyer_quality (0.5), voice (0.3), signal (0.2)." |
+| **Verifier** | A pipeline of judges run in order, with dependencies. | "install → typecheck → build → semantic" |
+| **Feedback trajectory** | A multi-shot record of attempts, approvals, rejections, edits, metrics, and policy outcomes. | "draft → user rejects → revised draft → approved → measured" |
+
+That's the whole framework. Everything else (sessions, traces, layers) is plumbing around those three.
+
+When the thing being evaluated is an agent that should keep working, use
+[`runAgentControlLoop`](./control-runtime.md). It turns validators into a
+runtime loop: observe typed state, validate it, decide the next action, act,
+and repeat until the task passes, blocks, times out, spends too much, or stops
+making progress.
+
+When normal agent usage should become reusable training/eval signal, use
+[`FeedbackTrajectory`](./feedback-trajectories.md). It captures approvals,
+rejections, edits, option choices, metrics, and policy blocks as portable data
+that can seed memory, replay scenarios, and optimization.
+
+## Vocabulary, plain English
+
+| Term | Plain English |
+|---|---|
+| **Artifact** | The thing being judged. Often a workdir of files, sometimes a string of text. |
+| **Snapshot** | A frozen view of an artifact (every file path → content). What the judge actually reads. |
+| **Harness** | A description of *how to run* the artifact: setup command, test command, working dir, timeout. |
+| **Sandbox driver** | The thing that actually executes commands inside the harness. Local subprocess, or remote container. |
+| **Layer** | One stage of a verifier pipeline (install, typecheck, build, semantic, …). |
+| **Finding** | A specific issue a judge found — file, line, severity, message. |
+| **Trace store** | The append-only log of every span/event during a run. Replay = read this back. |
+| **Composite score** | A 0..1 number combining all dimensions. The single number you gate on. |
+| **Rubric version** | A stable hash of the rubric. Scores from different rubric versions are not comparable. |
+| **Muffled gate** | A check that should fail loud but silently passes (e.g. `command || true`). The most expensive bug class in this codebase — see SKILL.md. |
+
+## The feedback trajectory loop
+
+For agentic systems, the highest-quality labels often come from normal review
+workflow, not a separate labeling UI:
+
+```text
+agent proposes -> user approves/rejects/edits/selects -> agent revises -> outcome is measured
+```
+
+`FeedbackTrajectory` is the portable record of that loop. Browser agents can
+store task outcomes, coding agents can store patch review plus test results,
+and research agents can store reviewer corrections. The domain changes; the
+shape stays the same.
+
+Those trajectories can be converted into preference memory, `DatasetScenario`
+rows, optimizer rows, and held-out examples for overfit checks.
+
+## The three-layer eval (for code generators)
+
+When the artifact is generated code, agent-eval scores it at three independent layers. Each layer fails differently, and you want to know which one broke:
+
+```
+L0  builder        Did the agent's session itself work?
+                   (Did it produce an artifact at all?)
+                              │
+                              ▼
+L1  app-build      Does the artifact build / typecheck / test?
+                   (Static signal, ground-truth gate.)
+                              │
+                              ▼
+L2  app-runtime    Does the artifact actually run end-to-end?
+                   (Dynamic signal — only worth checking if L1 passed.)
+```
+
+`BuilderSession` orchestrates this. It opens at `startChat`, runs the build at `ship`, runs the runtime check at `runAppScenario`. Each layer emits a trace span. Composite score aggregates them with `scoreProject`.
+
+Why three? Because each catches a different failure mode:
+- L0 misses — agent crashed mid-generation, you have a half-written file.
+- L1 misses — files exist but typecheck fails. LLM judges can't reliably catch this.
+- L2 misses — code compiles but does the wrong thing at runtime.
+
+If you only check one layer, you ship the bugs that the other two layers would have caught.
+
+## How rubrics work
+
+A rubric describes:
+1. **Dimensions** — the axes you score on (e.g. `buyer_quality`, `voice`, `signal`).
+2. **Weights** — how to combine dimensions into a composite (`0.5 * buyer_quality + 0.3 * voice + 0.2 * signal`).
+3. **Failure modes** — named patterns the judge looks for ("ai-cadence", "vague-claim").
+4. **Wins** — named positive patterns ("specific-component", "earned-detail").
+5. **System prompt** — what to tell the judging LLM about the persona and the task.
+
+Built-in rubrics ship in `src/wire/rubrics.ts` (e.g. `anti-slop` for technical-buyer voice). You can also pass a rubric inline — the same shape, just defined at the call site.
+
+A rubric is plain data. The hash of that data is the `rubricVersion`. Two scores are only comparable if they used the same `rubricVersion` — change the rubric and you start a new comparison series.
+
+## How verifiers work
+
+When you have a multi-step pipeline (install → typecheck → build → lint → semantic), use `MultiLayerVerifier`:
+
+```ts
+const verifier = new MultiLayerVerifier([
+  installLayer,      // runs `pnpm install`
+  typecheckLayer,    // runs `tsc --noEmit`, depends on install
+  buildLayer,        // runs `pnpm build`, depends on typecheck
+  semanticLayer,     // LLM judge, weight 3, depends on build
+])
+
+const report = await verifier.run({ env: { runner, workdir, ... } })
+report.allPass        // boolean — every layer passed
+report.blendedScore   // 0..1 — weighted aggregate
+report.layers         // per-layer status, findings, duration
+```
+
+Two rules that will save you bugs (paid for in real incidents — see SKILL.md):
+
+1. **Run both gates.** Build gates catch code that doesn't compile; structural assertions catch missing files. Run both unconditionally — they catch orthogonal failures.
+
+2. **Pair LLM judges with build outcomes.** An LLM judge will rate non-compiling code as "looks right" (0.8). Always short-circuit on `buildOutcome.passed === false` before any LLM judging.
+
+## The trace model (skip on first read)
+
+Every operation emits structured spans into a `TraceStore`. A run is a tree:
+
+```
+builder-session                 [span]
+├── chat-turn                   [span]
+├── ship                        [span]
+│   ├── harness.install         [span]
+│   ├── harness.typecheck       [span]
+│   └── harness.build           [span]
+└── app-runtime                 [span]
+    └── scenario.run            [span]
+```
+
+Spans are append-only and have stable ids — replay is reading the same store back. OTLP export ships them out for distributed tracing.
+
+You don't need to build the trace tree by hand. `BuilderSession` does it for you. Look at the trace store when you're debugging a flaky run; ignore it otherwise.
+
+## Where to go next
+
+- **Need the layman feature map?** → [feature-guide.md](./feature-guide.md) — what each primitive does, when to use it, integration patterns, and guardrails.
+- **Just want to score a string against a rubric?** → [wire-protocol.md](./wire-protocol.md) — HTTP/RPC interface, pluggable from any language.
+- **Need a reusable driver/worker/evaluator loop?** → [control-runtime.md](./control-runtime.md) — generic runtime plus coding, browser, computer-use, and research integration patterns.
+- **Want review feedback to become eval/optimization data?** → [feedback-trajectories.md](./feedback-trajectories.md) — turn feedback into datasets, optimizer rows, and preference memory.
+- **Building a code-generator eval?** → SKILL.md §Minimal working path — the `BuilderSession` recipe.
+- **Multi-layer verifier?** → SKILL.md §Verification pipeline.
+- **Adding a new judge or rubric?** → `src/wire/rubrics.ts` for the cross-language path; `src/anti-slop.ts` and `src/judges.ts` for the in-process path.

package/docs/control-runtime.md

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+# Agent Control Runtime
+
+`runAgentControlLoop` is the smallest reusable runtime for agentic tasks:
+
+```text
+observe state -> validate state -> decide next action -> act -> repeat
+```
+
+It is intentionally not a topology framework. Direct execution, driver
+intervention, critique/revision, specialist fan-out, and user escalation are
+all just actions selected by policy.
+
+Use it when an agent should keep working until objective state says the task is
+done, blocked, too expensive, or no longer improving.
+
+## Core API
+
+```ts
+import {
+  objectiveEval,
+  runAgentControlLoop,
+  subjectiveEval,
+} from '@tangle-network/agent-eval'
+
+const result = await runAgentControlLoop({
+  intent: 'Create a final answer with citations and no math errors.',
+  budget: { maxSteps: 6, maxWallMs: 180_000, maxCostUsd: 1.50 },
+
+  async observe() {
+    return await readCurrentTaskState()
+  },
+
+  async validate({ state }) {
+    return [
+      objectiveEval({
+        id: 'citations-present',
+        passed: state.citations.length >= 2,
+        severity: 'critical',
+      }),
+      objectiveEval({
+        id: 'math-reconciles',
+        passed: state.mathErrors.length === 0,
+        severity: 'critical',
+      }),
+      subjectiveEval({
+        id: 'answer-usefulness',
+        passed: state.judgeScore >= 0.8,
+        score: state.judgeScore,
+        severity: 'warning',
+      }),
+    ]
+  },
+
+  async decide({ evals, history }) {
+    const failed = evals.filter((e) => !e.passed)
+    if (!failed.length) return { type: 'stop', pass: true, reason: 'done' }
+    return {
+      type: 'continue',
+      action: { type: 'revise', failures: failed.map((e) => e.id) },
+      reason: `fix ${failed.map((e) => e.id).join(', ')}`,
+    }
+  },
+
+  async act(action) {
+    return await worker.act(action)
+  },
+
+  getActionCostUsd: ({ result }) => result.costUsd,
+  stopPolicies: {
+    maxNoProgressSteps: 2,
+    maxRepeatedActions: 3,
+  },
+})
+```
+
+## Design Rules
+
+- Keep domain adapters in downstream repos until they are reused by multiple
+  integrations.
+- Use the same adapter in product, benchmark replay, and optimization. Swapping
+  the state reader or worker implementation is fine; changing validators,
+  action semantics, or stop policy means you are no longer measuring what users
+  experience.
+- Prefer objective validators over LLM judges. Use LLM judges for judgment,
+  usefulness, clarity, and domain expert review.
+- Treat irreversible external actions as domain policy, not runtime policy.
+  The runtime can stop loops; the downstream adapter must decide which actions
+  require approval before `act()`.
+- Use typed state. Do not make the policy reason only over transcript text.
+- Make `act()` return cost when possible so `maxCostUsd` can enforce recorded
+  spend.
+
+## Product / Eval Contract
+
+The runtime is most useful when a downstream product exposes a small adapter:
+
+```ts
+interface ProductControlAdapter<State, Action, ActionResult> {
+  observe(): Promise<State>
+  validate(state: State): Promise<ControlEvalResult[]>
+  decide(ctx: ControlContext<State, Action, ActionResult>): Promise<ControlDecision<Action>>
+  act(action: Action): Promise<ActionResult>
+}
+```
+
+Production passes the adapter real sessions, credentials, and storage. Evals
+pass the same adapter replay fixtures, sandboxes, or recorded traces. The
+adapter boundary is the transfer point between training and real usage.
+
+Avoid this split:
+
+```text
+benchmark harness has one loop
+product runtime has another loop
+optimizer tunes only the benchmark loop
+```
+
+That creates benchmark wins that do not transfer. Keep one loop and vary only
+the dependencies behind `observe` and `act`.
+
+## What the Runtime Guarantees
+
+- `maxSteps`, `maxWallMs`, and `maxCostUsd` guard runaway loops.
+- repeated-action and no-progress stop policies catch stuck behavior.
+- `actionFailure: 'continue'` records worker failures and lets policy recover.
+- `actionFailure: 'stop'` fails fast for workflows where a failed action should
+  abort.
+- observation, validation, decision, stop-policy, and action failures are
+  returned as structured `runtimeErrors` instead of disappearing.
+- trace sink and `onStep` callback failures are recorded in `runtimeErrors`
+  but do not abort the control loop. Agent progress should not depend on
+  telemetry availability.
+- action-policy preflight belongs before `act()`. Use `evaluateActionPolicy`
+  to block or label side effects, budget breaches, and missing expected
+  outcomes before any irreversible action runs.
+- when a `TraceStore` is supplied, the runtime emits:
+  - one run
+  - one tool span per control step
+  - one judge span per eval result
+  - budget ledger entries for recorded spend
+
+## Propose / Review Preset
+
+`runProposeReviewAsControlLoop` adapts the common artifact-refinement loop onto
+the generic runtime:
+
+```text
+propose -> verify -> review -> propose again
+```
+
+Use it when the task is naturally "produce or improve state until verification
+passes."
+
+```ts
+import { runProposeReviewAsControlLoop } from '@tangle-network/agent-eval'
+
+const report = await runProposeReviewAsControlLoop({
+  goal: 'Make the implementation pass tests and satisfy the reviewer.',
+  initialState: { workdir },
+  maxShots: 5,
+
+  async propose({ state, priorReview }) {
+    return await codingAgent.patch({
+      workdir: state.workdir,
+      instruction: priorReview?.nextShotInstruction,
+    })
+  },
+
+  async verify(state) {
+    const tests = await runTests(state.workdir)
+    return {
+      pass: tests.ok,
+      score: tests.ok ? 1 : 0,
+      failingLayers: tests.ok ? [] : ['tests'],
+      details: tests,
+    }
+  },
+
+  async review({ verification }) {
+    return await reviewer.explainNextShot(verification)
+  },
+
+  failureClassFromVerification(verification) {
+    if (verification.failingLayers?.includes('tests')) return 'sandbox_failure'
+    return 'unknown'
+  },
+})
+```
+
+Long term, `runProposeReview` should remain the stable convenience API, while
+its internals can route through this control-loop preset.
+
+## Domain Patterns
+
+These examples show what belongs in product repos. They should not become core
+`agent-eval` adapters until the same adapter shape is reused by multiple
+products.
+
+## Shared Sandbox Execution
+
+Yes, harnesses and judges can run against the same sandbox. The common pattern
+is to pass one sandbox driver and one workdir through every layer:
+
+```ts
+const driver = new SubprocessSandboxDriver({ cwd: workdir, env })
+const harness = new SandboxHarness(driver)
+```
+
+Use the same sandbox when checks need shared state:
+
+- install dependencies once, then typecheck/build/test in the same workdir
+- run a browser/computer-use scenario against the app the harness just started
+- let a judge inspect files, logs, screenshots, or traces produced by earlier
+  layers
+
+Use separate sandboxes when checks need isolation:
+
+- variants are running in parallel
+- a test mutates global state
+- credentials or network access differ by phase
+- one action can corrupt the workdir for later checks
+
+The important rule is explicit ownership: one driver/workdir means shared state;
+multiple drivers/workdirs means isolated state. Do not rely on hidden global
+state.
+
+### Coding Agent
+
+```ts
+interface CodingState {
+  workdir: string
+  diffSummary: string
+  tests: { typecheck: boolean; unit: boolean; e2e?: boolean }
+  generatedFiles: string[]
+  runtimeTrace?: string
+  reviewerFindings: string[]
+}
+```
+
+```ts
+type CodingAction =
+  | { type: 'patch'; instruction: string }
+  | { type: 'run_tests'; command: string }
+  | { type: 'review_diff' }
+  | { type: 'ask_user'; question: string }
+```
+
+Validators:
+
+- expected files exist
+- typecheck/build/tests pass
+- generated app or agent completes a representative runtime scenario
+- no hardcoded fake success or placeholder integrations
+- reviewer findings resolved or explicitly accepted
+
+Stop policy:
+
+- stop when build and runtime validators pass
+- stop on no progress after repeated patch/test cycles
+- ask user when task intent or credentials are missing
+
+### Browser / Computer-Use Agent
+
+Use this shape when the agent controls a browser, desktop session, or remote
+computer and needs to complete a task end-to-end.
+
+```ts
+interface ComputerUseState {
+  url?: string
+  goal: string
+  screenshot?: string
+  accessibilityTree?: unknown
+  completedSteps: string[]
+  openIssues: string[]
+  assertions: Array<{ id: string; passed: boolean; detail?: string }>
+}
+```
+
+```ts
+type ComputerUseAction =
+  | { type: 'navigate'; url: string }
+  | { type: 'click'; selectorOrDescription: string }
+  | { type: 'type'; selectorOrDescription: string; text: string }
+  | { type: 'inspect' }
+  | { type: 'ask_user'; question: string }
+```
+
+Validators:
+
+- required page or app state is reached
+- no blocking errors are visible
+- expected text, data, or UI state is present
+- screenshots or accessibility tree support the claimed success
+- repeated clicks or navigation loops are detected
+
+Stop policy:
+
+- stop when objective UI assertions pass
+- stop on repeated action or no-progress policies
+- ask user when credentials, permissions, or ambiguous choices block progress
+
+### Research / Documentation Agent
+
+Use this shape when the agent produces a brief, explanation, migration guide, or
+technical research note.
+
+```ts
+interface ResearchState {
+  question: string
+  draft: string
+  sources: Array<{ url: string; title?: string; relevant: boolean }>
+  unsupportedClaims: string[]
+  reviewerFindings: string[]
+}
+```
+
+```ts
+type ResearchAction =
+  | { type: 'search'; query: string }
+  | { type: 'read_source'; url: string }
+  | { type: 'revise_draft'; failures: string[] }
+  | { type: 'ask_user'; question: string }
+```
+
+Validators:
+
+- every important claim has a source
+- sources are relevant and current enough for the task
+- unsupported claims are removed or marked as uncertain
+- reviewer findings are resolved
+- final output answers the original question
+
+Stop policy:
+
+- stop when source coverage and reviewer checks pass
+- ask user when the question scope is ambiguous
+- stop on repeated research queries with no new evidence
+
+## Integration Checklist
+
+For a new downstream integration:
+
+1. Define typed state.
+2. Define domain actions.
+3. Write objective validators first.
+4. Add subjective judges only for judgment-heavy dimensions.
+5. Decide which actions require approval before execution.
+6. Add cost extraction for expensive actions.
+7. Add no-progress and repeated-action policies.
+8. Emit to a `TraceStore` in CI and production-like evals.
+9. Keep the adapter downstream until it proves reusable.