ThinkingAgent

Oct 8, 2026 · Artificial Intelligence

No Evals, No Production Agents: The 4-Layer Evaluation Framework

This article presents a comprehensive four-layer evaluation framework for production-grade AI agents—Model, Component, Trajectory, and Outcome Eval—along with three dataset types (Golden, Edge Case, Adversarial), three evaluation methods (Rule-based, LLM-as-Judge, Human), seven key metrics, regression automation, and a production-to-eval flywheel, illustrated with a customer-service refund agent case study.