skill~240 mindifficulty

Evaluation & Guardrails

You cannot trust or improve an LLM app you cannot measure and constrain.

1

Learn it

Take the DeepLearning.AI guardrails short course to build validation that catches hallucinations, PII leaks, and off-topic responses. Then study OpenAI's cookbook example to implement input and output guardrails in code, and set up a small evaluation set so you can compare prompt or model changes objectively.

By the end you’ll be able to

  • Define evaluation criteria and test LLM outputs systematically
  • Add input/output guardrails for safety, PII, and format

Free resources

2

Practice

Create a 15-example eval set for your RAG or chatbot with expected behaviors, then add a guardrail that blocks or reformats bad outputs and measure the improvement.

3

Build it — your output

An evaluation harness plus a working input/output guardrail for one of your earlier apps.

4

Prove it — check yourself

You’re ready to move on when you can honestly say yes to each:

  • Can you build a repeatable eval set and score outputs against it?
  • Can you add a guardrail that validates or blocks unsafe output?
  • Can you explain how you would detect a prompt-injection attempt?

Do it with AI

Use a free AI tool as your tutor and pair-programmer. Copy a prompt below into Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini (for building, try Cursor or Copilot).

The habit: Try it yourself first — a little struggle is where the learning actually happens. Then ask for a hint before the answer — never copy blindly.

  • Understand itClaude / ChatGPT / Gemini

    I'm a beginner learning "Evaluation & Guardrails". Explain it in simple terms with a real-world analogy, then ask me ONE question to check my understanding — don't reveal the answer.

  • PracticeClaude / ChatGPT / Gemini

    Give me 3 short practice problems on "Evaluation & Guardrails" (my goal: define evaluation criteria and test llm outputs systematically), from easy to hard. Don't include the solutions yet — I'll try them first, then ask you to check.

  • Get unstuckClaude / ChatGPT / Gemini

    I'm stuck on this exercise about "Evaluation & Guardrails": [paste your attempt here]. Give me ONE small hint to move forward — do NOT give me the full solution.

  • Build & reviewCursor / Copilot

    Here is my work for a "Evaluation & Guardrails" task: [paste your code or answer]. Review it: point out what's wrong and WHY, and suggest improvements — but let me make the fixes myself.

  • Prove itClaude / ChatGPT / Gemini

    Quiz me on "Evaluation & Guardrails". Ask me 5 questions one at a time, wait for my answer each time, then tell me if I'm right and briefly why.

My notes