Evaluation before shipping (fast sanity checks)

Decision in 20 seconds

Fast sanity checks before shipping help builders confirm core behavior without full test suites. They reduce risk of obvious failures in production but don’t replace deeper evaluation.

Key points

• Sanity checks are shallow, fast, and targeted—designed to catch showstopper issues early.
• Evaluation scope should align with shipping context: what breaks if this fails? What’s the rollback cost?
• Tests used for shipping decisions must be stable, versioned, and run in an environment that mirrors deployment.

What changed recently

• The industry shift toward 'agent-native' systems (as noted May 15, 2026) increases reliance on runtime behavior checks over static validation.
• Metrics like Daily Active Agents (DAA) now co-drive evaluation criteria—implying behavioral correctness matters more than output accuracy alone.

Explanation

Agent-native systems often execute multi-step, stateful actions—making pre-shipment evaluation less about single-response correctness and more about observable side effects, timing, and coordination.

Evidence is limited on how builders currently adapt sanity checks for these systems; the May 15 briefs note the trend but do not specify tooling or practices adopted by teams.

Tools / Examples

• Run a smoke test that triggers an agent’s approval flow and verifies the remote monitoring hook fires within 2s.
• Validate that a browser-level action (e.g., via Kimi Web Bridge) completes without throwing unhandled exceptions in a clean incognito session.

Evidence timeline

Sources

• RadarAI updates (evidence)
• RadarAI Methodology
• Sources & Coverage
• Signals Library

FAQ

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evaluation shipping tests

Last updated: 2026-05-16 · Policy: Editorial standards · Methodology