LLM Benchmarking with lm-evaluation-harness
Orchestra-Research/AI-Research-SKILLs
Runs lm-evaluation-harness to benchmark language models on academic suites such as MMLU, GSM8K and HumanEval, compare models and track training checkpoints.
Entry point for evals. An agent skill from ai-evals-course/evals-skills.
Install Evals Start
$ npx skills add ai-evals-course/evals-skills --skill evals-start -a claude-codeProject install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.
$ gh skill install ai-evals-course/evals-skills evals-start --agent claude-codeProject scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ai-evals-course/evals-skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/evals-start .claude/skills/evals-start && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.
Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/
Install the "evals-start" agent skill from https://github.com/ai-evals-course/evals-skills/tree/main/skills/evals-start into .claude/skills/evals-start/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "evals-start", then confirm the skill loads.Claude Code copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
$skill-installer install https://github.com/ai-evals-course/evals-skills/tree/main/skills/evals-startType this inside Codex. $skill-installer <name> installs a curated skill from openai/skills. The installer writes to $CODEX_HOME/skills (default ~/.codex/skills). Restart Codex if the skill does not show up.
$ npx skills add ai-evals-course/evals-skills --skill evals-start -a codexProject install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.codex/skills/.
$ gh skill install ai-evals-course/evals-skills evals-start --agent codexProject scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ai-evals-course/evals-skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .agents/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/evals-start .agents/skills/evals-start && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.agents/skills/ instead of .agents/skills for a personal install.
Codex skills documentation · loads skills from .agents/skills/
Install the "evals-start" agent skill from https://github.com/ai-evals-course/evals-skills/tree/main/skills/evals-start into .agents/skills/evals-start/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "evals-start", then confirm the skill loads.Codex copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
$ npx skills add ai-evals-course/evals-skills --skill evals-start -a cursorProject install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.cursor/skills/.
$ gh skill install ai-evals-course/evals-skills evals-start --agent cursorProject scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ai-evals-course/evals-skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .cursor/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/evals-start .cursor/skills/evals-start && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.cursor/skills/ instead of .cursor/skills for a personal install.
Cursor skills documentation · loads skills from .cursor/skills/, .agents/skills/, .claude/skills/, .codex/skills/
Install the "evals-start" agent skill from https://github.com/ai-evals-course/evals-skills/tree/main/skills/evals-start into .cursor/skills/evals-start/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "evals-start", then confirm the skill loads.Cursor copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
$ gemini skills install https://github.com/ai-evals-course/evals-skills.git --path skills/evals-start--scope user (default) or --scope workspace; --path is the subfolder of the repo that holds the skill; --consent skips the security confirmation prompt.
$ npx skills add ai-evals-course/evals-skills --skill evals-start -a gemini-cliProject install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.gemini/skills/.
$ gh skill install ai-evals-course/evals-skills evals-start --agent gemini-cliProject scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ai-evals-course/evals-skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .gemini/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/evals-start .gemini/skills/evals-start && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.gemini/skills/ instead of .gemini/skills for a personal install, then run /skills reload.
Gemini CLI skills documentation · loads skills from .gemini/skills/, .agents/skills/
Install the "evals-start" agent skill from https://github.com/ai-evals-course/evals-skills/tree/main/skills/evals-start into .gemini/skills/evals-start/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "evals-start", then confirm the skill loads.Gemini CLI copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
$ gh skill install ai-evals-course/evals-skills evals-startInstalls for Copilot at project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Preview a skill first with gh skill preview. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).
$ npx skills add ai-evals-course/evals-skills --skill evals-start -a github-copilotProject install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.copilot/skills/.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ai-evals-course/evals-skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .github/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/evals-start .github/skills/evals-start && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.copilot/skills/ instead of .github/skills for a personal install. Commit .github/skills so cloud agent and code review can use it.
GitHub Copilot skills documentation · loads skills from .github/skills/, .claude/skills/, .agents/skills/
Install the "evals-start" agent skill from https://github.com/ai-evals-course/evals-skills/tree/main/skills/evals-start into .github/skills/evals-start/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "evals-start", then confirm the skill loads.GitHub Copilot copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
$ npx skills add ai-evals-course/evals-skills --skill evals-start -a opencodeOpenCode documents no install command of its own. Project install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.config/opencode/skills/.
$ gh skill install ai-evals-course/evals-skills evals-start --agent opencodeProject scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ai-evals-course/evals-skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .opencode/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/evals-start .opencode/skills/evals-start && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.config/opencode/skills/ instead of .opencode/skills for a personal install.
OpenCode skills documentation · loads skills from .opencode/skills/, .claude/skills/, .agents/skills/
Install the "evals-start" agent skill from https://github.com/ai-evals-course/evals-skills/tree/main/skills/evals-start into .opencode/skills/evals-start/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "evals-start", then confirm the skill loads.OpenCode copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
Facts
- Skill name
evals-start- GitHub stars
- 1.5k
- Token cost
- ~412 tokens
- SKILL.md length
- 200 words
- Files
- 2
- Skills in repo
- 9
- Repo updated
- First seen
- Licence
- Apache-2.0
At a glance
Entry point for evals. An agent skill from ai-evals-course/evals-skills.
- The user asks for help with evals
- Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md
- Does not know where to begin
- Asks for something no other skill in this plugin matches
What it does
Evals Start is an agent skill from ai-evals-course/evals-skills. Entry point for evals. Use when the user asks for help with evals, does not know where to begin, or asks for something no other skill in this plugin matches. Do NOT use when a more specific skill in this plugin already matches; load that skill directly.
Its SKILL.md is about 410 tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 2 other files (for example `agents/openai.yaml`).
It sits in AI & LLM Engineering, covering LLM evaluation. The repository describes itself as: Skills that guide AI coding agents to help you build product-specific AI evals. The licence is Apache-2.0.
When your agent uses it
- The user asks for help with evals
- Does not know where to begin
- Asks for something no other skill in this plugin matches
- A more specific skill in this plugin already matches
Example prompts
- “/evals-start”
What it can do on your machine
Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 80d5f7b. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.
Tool permissions
Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.
From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.
Runs code
No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.
From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.
Network
No URLs in SKILL.md.
From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.
Credentials
Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.
From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.
Context cost
Evals Start loads about 412 tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 66 tokens; SKILL.md has 200 words of instructions outside code blocks.
Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.
Safety
Auto-check passed
The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.
Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.
SKILL.md
The full file from ai-evals-course/evals-skills at commit 80d5f7b, republished under its Apache-2.0 licence (© ai-evals-course). 200 words, ~412 tokens.
Download SKILL.mdSave it as
.claude/skills/evals-start/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 1 other file; get the full folder from GitHub.- name
- evals-start
- description
- Entry point for evals. Use when the user asks for help with evals, does not know where to begin, or asks for something no other skill in this plugin matches. Do NOT use when a more specific skill in this plugin already matches; load that skill directly.
Evals Start
This plugin splits eval work into targeted skills. Your job here is small: find the row below that matches the user's situation, tell the user which skill you are loading and why, then load that skill and follow its workflow from start to finish instead of improvising your own version of it.
| Situation | Skill to load |
|---|---|
| Has traces, wants to find failure modes, no established taxonomy yet | error-discovery |
| Has an existing eval pipeline and wants to know if it can be trusted | eval-audit |
| Has a known failure mode that code can check (e.g., format, schema, regex, execution) | write-code-eval |
| Has a known failure mode and wants an LLM judge for it | write-judge-prompt |
| Has an LLM judge or evaluator and wants to check its quality | validate-evaluator |
| Has no traces to review yet | generate-synthetic-data, then error-discovery |
| Wants a custom annotation interface for some other labeling task | build-review-interface |
| Wants to evaluate a RAG pipeline | evaluate-rag |
Most requests that mention error analysis with traces in hand mean error-discovery. New users with an existing pipeline usually need eval-audit first. This file holds only routing. When in doubt about which row fits, ask the user instead of guessing. The workflow lives in the targeted skill.
© ai-evals-course, Apache-2.0. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file
Files
SKILL.md and 1 other file in skills/evals-start of ai-evals-course/evals-skills.
- SKILL.md
- agents/openai.yaml
Open the folder on GitHubat commit 80d5f7b
Compare with similar skills
Evals Start next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.
| Skill | Stars | Used in | Tokens | Auto-check | Licence | Repo updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Evals Start this skillai-evals-course/evals-skills | 1.5k | — | ~412 | Automated safety check: Pass | Apache-2.0 | |
| LLM Benchmarking with lm-evaluation-harnessOrchestra-Research/AI-Research-SKILLs | 13k | 8 repos | ~3k | Automated safety check: Pass | MIT | |
| Hugging Face Local Model Evalshuggingface/skills | 11k | 2 repos | ~1.6k | Automated safety check: Pass | Apache-2.0 | |
| Looperksimback/looper | 710 | — | ~2.7k | Automated safety check: Notes | MIT | |
| Agent Eval Engineeringlangchain-ai/langchain-skills | 1.3k | — | ~4k | Automated safety check: Pass | MIT | |
| Quality FlywheelGoogleCloudPlatform/vertex-ai-samples | 792 | — | ~2k | Automated safety check: Pass | Apache-2.0 |
Similar skills
- Official
Hugging Face Local Model Evals
huggingface/skills
Runs evaluations of Hugging Face Hub models on local hardware with inspect-ai or lighteval, and helps choose between vLLM, Transformers and accelerate backends.
Looper
ksimback/looper
Scaffold a well-designed agent loop with best-practice coaching and a cross-model review council.
- Official
Agent Eval Engineering
langchain-ai/langchain-skills
Builds agent evaluations in stages: inspect the repository and traces, agree a Task Spec with you, then build, audit and run a Harbor task with an independent verifier.
Quality Flywheel
GoogleCloudPlatform/vertex-ai-samples
Evaluate and improve GenAI models and agents using the Google GenAI Evaluation SDK.
Eval Harness
cloudnative-co/claude-code-starter-kit
Formal evaluation framework for Claude Code sessions implementing eval-driven development (EDD) principles.
More from ai-evals-course/evals-skills
All 9 skills in this repoLLM Trace Review Interface
ai-evals-course/evals-skills
Builds a browser-based annotation page for reviewing LLM traces one at a time with pass/fail labels, notes and saved results, tailored to your data.
LLM Eval Pipeline Audit
ai-evals-course/evals-skills
Inspects an LLM evaluation setup for missing error analysis, unvalidated judges and vanity metrics, and ranks the problems by impact with fixes.
Evaluate RAG
ai-evals-course/evals-skills
Guides evaluation of a RAG system by diagnosing failures in traces, building a retrieval test set and scoring retrieval and generation separately.
Synthetic Eval Data Generator
ai-evals-course/evals-skills
Builds diverse synthetic test inputs for LLM pipeline evaluation by defining failure-focused dimensions, drafting tuples with you and turning them into realistic queries.
LLM Judge Validation
ai-evals-course/evals-skills
Checks an LLM judge against human labels using train, dev and test splits, TPR and TNR, and a bias correction applied to production data.
LLM-as-Judge Prompt Writer
ai-evals-course/evals-skills
Designs a binary Pass/Fail LLM-as-Judge prompt for one subjective failure mode, built from a task statement, clear definitions, labeled examples and a structured output format.
Related
Categories
Questions about Evals Start
What does Evals Start do?
Entry point for evals. An agent skill from ai-evals-course/evals-skills. Evals Start is an agent skill from ai-evals-course/evals-skills. Entry point for evals.
When should I use Evals Start?
Evals Start fits situations like: the user asks for help with evals; does not know where to begin; asks for something no other skill in this plugin matches; A more specific skill in this plugin already matches.
How do I install Evals Start in Claude Code?
Run `npx skills add ai-evals-course/evals-skills --skill evals-start -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/evals-start in ai-evals-course/evals-skills) into .claude/skills/evals-start in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.
How do I install Evals Start in Codex?
Run `npx skills add ai-evals-course/evals-skills --skill evals-start -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/evals-start in ai-evals-course/evals-skills) into .agents/skills/evals-start in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.
Can I use Evals Start in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?
Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add ai-evals-course/evals-skills --skill evals-start -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/evals-start, .gemini/skills/evals-start, .github/skills/evals-start and .opencode/skills/evals-start in your project.
What does Evals Start need to run?
SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Evals Start is instructions for the agent only.
Does Evals Start access the network?
SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.
Is Evals Start safe to install?
Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.
What licence does Evals Start use?
Evals Start is published under the Apache-2.0 licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.
How many tokens does Evals Start use?
About 412 tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 1.6k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.
What are the alternatives to Evals Start?
Skills that share tags, products or a category with Evals Start: LLM Benchmarking with lm-evaluation-harness (Orchestra-Research/AI-Research-SKILLs, 13k stars), Hugging Face Local Model Evals (huggingface/skills, 11k stars), Looper (ksimback/looper, 710 stars) and Agent Eval Engineering (langchain-ai/langchain-skills, 1.3k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.
Who maintains Evals Start?
ai-evals-course (a GitHub organization) maintains it in ai-evals-course/evals-skills, which has 1,472 GitHub stars. The repository holds 9 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on September 24, 2026.
Source: ai-evals-course/evals-skills on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.