eval-harness-first SKILL.md skillA
eval-harness-first from wshobson/agents is an agent skill: a SKILL.md folder an AI agent loads when a task calls for it.
mdr add wshobson/agents/eval-harness-first@git:20260714.baa5bd7Pins git:20260714.baa5bd7 in mdr.lock. Pin the fingerprint instead.
- Audit grade
- A, 17 of 17 checks passed
- Kind
- SKILL.md skill
- Repository
- wshobson/agents
- Path
plugins/llm-finetuning/skills/eval-harness-first/SKILL.md- Versions recorded
- 1
- Latest version
- git:20260714.baa5bd7, committed Jul 14, 2026
- Size
- 7,992 bytes
- Repository stars
- 42,320
- License
- MIT
Build the evaluation harness that gates every fine-tuning run — golden sets, per-failure-mode graders, judge calibration, and base-model baselines. Use when starting a fine-tuning effort, when converting traces into an eval set, or when calibrating a judge against human labels.
Collected from public GitHub. Every version is saved exactly as it was and never changes. Install it at an exact version with the mdr tool, and every file is checked before it reaches your agent. The main file is checked against the SHA-256 fingerprint recorded here, and the others against the fingerprints GitHub keeps for its source commit. The automatic checks below grade the latest version, and the same checks always give the same file the same grade.
What the file says
# Eval Harness First The Phase 0 gate for the whole plugin: `finetuning-method-selection` and every downstream skill assume this harness exists before a training config gets written. The harness is not a run-end side artifact — it is the data-curation engine. The same labeled traces that build the goldens feed training data, minus an explicit holdout. **Input:** production/agent traces if they exist, or a task spec if they don't, plus labelers willing to grade ≥100 examples. **Output format:** the `eval/` directory below — goldens, graders, drift suite, and the base-model baseline that later phases gate on. ## The Gate No eval harness, no fine-tune. Skip to a training config and there is nothing to measure against, nothing to catch regressions, and no labeled data to train on. The flywheel: 1. **Collect traces** — production/agent spans, or synthetic tasks if none exist yet. 2. **Error analysis** — open coding on ≥100 traces, axial coding into 4–8 failure buckets. 3. **One grader per bucket** — deterministic first; calibrated LLM-judge only for genuinely subjective criteria. 4. **Prioritize** by frequency × severity × value. …
Read the whole file at its exact version.
How to install
mdr add wshobson/agents/eval-harness-first@sha256:6bc3a9942e461ca8The line at the top of this page pins the label git:20260714.baa5bd7, which is what most people want. This one pins the sha256 fingerprint of the contents instead, so it survives a label being moved. Either way the exact version is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install downloads and checks those contents again, so it installs them exactly or stops with an error.
[](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_oypemsbt47brtiav)
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Versions
The registry has recorded 1 version of this file, committed on Jul 14, 2026.
Audit of the latest version
- pass: Frontmatter block present
- pass: Frontmatter declares a name
- pass: Frontmatter declares a description
- pass: Size between 200 bytes and 200 KB (7992 bytes)
- pass: No zero-width or bidi control characters
- pass: No instruction hidden inside an HTML comment
- pass: No link to an exfiltration or paste host
- pass: No credential-shaped string
- pass: No instruction to send local credentials anywhere
- pass: No text hidden with inline styles
- pass: No prompt-injection phrasing
- pass: No curl or wget piped into a shell
- pass: No recursive delete of root, home or parent
- pass: No instruction to read or print local credentials
- pass: No base64 blob over 200 characters
- pass: No link to a raw IP address
- pass: No script tag
Source
wshobson/agents · 42,320 stars · license MIT · pushed 2026-11-08 · branch main
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_oypemsbt47brtiav GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=wshobson/agents/eval-harness-first GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/6bc3a9942e461ca8e400ccfc3e6962de07cd72c685768d630ab02ce3a0221f22
Your AI assistant does the legwork. You hear about the deals worth your word. Hand yours the standing instructions at modelranch.com and it joins the network that reads files like this one.
Guides: the SKILL.md format and its required fields · what to check before you install a skill · how to pin a skill to an exact version · where to find agent skills · keeping a team on the same skills · which agent file does what.