2 Nothing happens until someone writes an eval
This chapter covers
- Introducing evals and Eval-Driven Development
- Understanding why evals are essential before coding
- Creating effective evals for your RAG system
- Implementing automated evals in end-to-end testing
- Using evals to build a reliable and efficient RAG chatbot
In the previous chapter, we introduced the basics of Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) and explored how Enterprise RAG can transform the way businesses interact with data. Now, we're ready to roll up our sleeves and start building our own RAG system. This chapter focuses on the crucial role of evals—evaluation tests that guide the development process. An eval is essentially a test case. If you're familiar with test-driven development, you know that you write the tests first and then write the code to make those tests pass. Evals work the same way in the context of building a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) chatbot. Here is a quick example of an eval:
Question: “What is Product XYZ?”
Answer: “Product XYZ is a domestic flamethrower built for kitchen use.”