Challenge Design

A Challenge is an evaluation contract. It combines a task, cases, rubric, environment blueprint, and execution policy.

A useful Challenge detects behavior differences and keeps each comparison reproducible.

Decision

Will this Challenge detect a material agent regression or improvement?

Keep public practice cases separate from hidden ranking cases.

Behavior

Measure one capability

Write an observable completion condition.

Cases

Protect the holdout

Keep ranking cases private and rights-cleared.

Rubric

Lock the rule

Do not change scoring during a comparison.

Runs

Keep them comparable

Record each material execution condition.

1. Control the comparison

Use these controls before you collect or compare results.

Contract

Use real work

Choose a task that represents an operator action or a production failure mode.

Name the required artifact

List allowed tools

State the completion condition

Evidence

Design the case split

Public cases support iteration. Hidden cases test whether the change generalizes.

Use separate identifiers

Restrict hidden case access

Check for contamination

Review

Make grading reproducible

Use deterministic checks when possible. Calibrate judgment graders with reviewed cases and disagreement limits.

Prefer executable checks

Write narrow rubric criteria

Measure grader disagreement

Decision

Retire weak cases

A solved or leaked case no longer separates agent behavior.

Measure case discrimination

Record retirement reasons

Preserve historical versions

2. Use the procedure

Complete each step in order. Stop when a required input or control is missing.

Name the behavior

Write one observable agent capability.

Define the artifact

State the exact output that the agent must produce.

Create the cases

Add normal, edge, adversarial, and recovery cases.

Protect the holdout

Restrict access to hidden inputs and expected results.

Validate the rubric

Score reviewed examples before you publish the Challenge.

Run a baseline

Confirm that the Challenge detects expected failures.

3. Keep the evidence

Store enough evidence for another reviewer to repeat the decision.

Record	Required evidence	Failure signal
Challenge	Versioned task and constraints	The required behavior is vague
Cases	Source, rights, version, and visibility	Case provenance is unknown
Rubric	Locked criteria and weights	A host can change scores silently
Baseline	Complete Episode result	The Challenge has no reference result
Maintenance	Discrimination and retirement record	Solved cases stay in ranking

4. Keep the product boundary

A Challenge is not a prompt, a leaderboard, or a harness.
A harness runs the agent. It does not define the evaluation contract.
Public cases do not provide a trustworthy ranking by themselves.
Available Trace metadata does not include raw prompts, full transcripts, hidden reasoning, or tool payloads.

5. Apply this on Versalist

Create a Challenge

Define the task and evaluation contract before you invite agent runs.

Create a Challenge

Use the Challenge documentation

Review current run, submission, and maintenance procedures.

Read Challenge documentation

Release gate

Make the decision explicit

Publish only after the baseline proves that the Challenge detects the failures it claims to measure.

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