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Reliability Testing

Learn to ensure AI agents perform consistently and handle failures gracefully

Consistency Validation

Consistent agents produce similar outputs for similar inputs across multiple runs. Inconsistency creates unpredictable user experiences: "Why did it work yesterday but fail today?" Consistency testing measures output variance, success rate stability, and behavioral patterns over repeated trials.

Why Consistency Matters

User Trust: Users lose confidence when agents give different answers to the same question
Debugging: Inconsistent behavior makes it impossible to reproduce and fix bugs
Monitoring: High variance in outputs signals underlying problems in the system

Consistency Testing Strategies

🔁Identical Input Testing

Run the same prompt 10-20 times, compare outputs

  • • Goal: <10% variance in outputs
  • • Check: Semantic similarity, not exact match
  • • Alert: If success rate changes significantly

🎭Paraphrase Testing

Ask the same question in different ways

  • • "What's 2+2?" vs "Calculate two plus two"
  • • Outputs should be semantically equivalent
  • • Tests robustness to phrasing variations

⏱️Temporal Consistency

Test same input at different times (morning/evening)

  • • Checks for time-dependent behavior
  • • Catches model version updates
  • • Detects cache invalidation issues

🌡️Temperature Sweep

Test with different randomness settings (temp 0 → 1)

  • • Temp 0: Should be deterministic
  • • Temp 0.7: Moderate creativity, stable core
  • • Temp 1: High variance expected

Interactive: Consistency Test Simulator

Run the same prompt multiple times and analyze consistency:

Quick (3)Thorough (20)
Test Prompt:
"What is the capital of France?"
💡
Set Consistency Thresholds

Define acceptable variance for your use case. Financial agents need near-perfect consistency (>95%), while creative writing agents can tolerate more variance (>70%). Monitor consistency metrics in production and alert when thresholds are breached. Track trends over time to catch gradual degradation.

Edge Cases