Akshay Parkhi's Weblog

1) Prompt (Runtime System Prompt)

What it is: Instructions passed in the API call for a single request.

• One-time instruction (per request)
• Not enforced; the LLM may skip or reorder steps
• Good for quick control (tone, format, role)

Use when: prototyping, low-risk tasks, or temporary behavior changes.

Avoid when: you need guaranteed step execution or strict sequencing at scale.

2) Skill (Reusable Structured Prompt Module)

What it is: A reusable, structured reasoning template/module that improves consistency across repeated tasks.

• Reusable and standardized
• More consistent than ad-hoc prompts
• Still LLM-driven (probabilistic), not a hard execution engine

Use when: the task repeats often and you want consistent analysis structure, formatting, or output schema.

Avoid when: the workflow must never skip steps or must follow an exact sequence every time.

3) Tool (Deterministic Capability)

What it is: An executable function that performs a real action (API call, database query, file write, etc.).

• Deterministic execution (given correct code and inputs)
• Interacts with real systems or data
• Auditable and testable

Use when: you need real data, guaranteed operations, and repeatable correctness.

Important: Orchestrator (Code) for Strict Multi-Step Workflows

If your process requires a fixed sequence of steps that must always execute in order, the most reliable design is:

1. Use code (an orchestrator or state machine) to enforce the required steps deterministically.
2. Then pass the final combined results to the LLM for reasoning, optionally using a Skill for consistent formatting.

Quick Decision Rule

• Need guaranteed execution? Use Tools + Orchestrator.
• Need consistent repeated reasoning/output? Use a Skill.
• Need a one-off behavior tweak? Use a Prompt.

Eval methods for Tools, Skills, and Prompts, and how to ensure correctness

---

1. Evaluating Tools (MCP / Agentic Tools)

Tools have the most structured evaluation surface because they expose defined inputs and outputs.

Metrics to Measure

Metric	What It Checks
Tool Correctness	Did the agent pick the right tool?
Argument Correctness	Were the arguments passed correctly?
Ordering	Were tools called in the right sequence?
Task Completion	Did the end-to-end trajectory achieve the goal?

Methods

a) Deterministic comparison (fastest, most reliable)

Compare tools_called vs expected_tools — name match, argument match, and order match.

from deepeval.test_case import LLMTestCase, ToolCall
from deepeval.metrics import ToolCorrectnessMetric

test_case = LLMTestCase(
    input="What's the return policy?",
    actual_output="We offer a 30-day refund.",
    tools_called=[ToolCall(name="WebSearch"), ToolCall(name="ToolQuery")],
    expected_tools=[ToolCall(name="WebSearch")],
)

metric = ToolCorrectnessMetric(threshold=0.7)

# Score = Correctly Used Tools / Total Tools Called

b) Trajectory-level evaluation

Do not just check the final output. Evaluate the full sequence of tool calls to detect missing tools, extra tools, and parameter mismatches.

c) LLM-as-judge fallback

When tool usage is correct but non-obvious, use a judge model to assess whether the chosen tools were optimal given the available tools context.

---

2. Evaluating Skills

Skills require evaluation of both activation (did the correct skill load?) and output quality (did it improve results?).

a) Skill Activation / Routing Evals

Prompt	Expected Skill	should_trigger
Review this PR for security issues	security-review	true
Fix the typo on line 3	security-review	false
Check this code for vulnerabilities	security-review	true

Grading is deterministic pass or fail — did the expected skill activate?

b) Skill Output Quality Evals

• LLM-as-judge with rubric scoring (1 to 5 scale)
• Exact or string match for structured sections
• A/B comparison (with skill vs without skill)

c) Progressive Disclosure Check

Measure token usage when multiple skills are available to ensure context does not grow unnecessarily.

---

3. Evaluating Prompts

a) Code-based grading (preferred)

# Exact match
def eval_exact(output, expected):
    return output.strip().lower() == expected.lower()

# String containment
def eval_contains(output, key_phrase):
    return key_phrase in output

b) LLM-as-judge (nuanced assessment)

def evaluate_likert(model_output, rubric):
    prompt = f"""Rate this response on a scale of 1-5:
    <rubric>{rubric}</rubric>
    <response>{model_output}</response>
    Think step-by-step, then output only the number."""
    return call_judge_model(prompt)

c) Embedding similarity

Use cosine similarity to ensure paraphrased inputs produce semantically consistent outputs.

d) ROUGE-L for summarization

Measures overlap between generated and reference summaries.

---

Universal Best Practices

1. Volume over perfection — automate at scale.
2. Include edge cases such as typos, ambiguity, long inputs, and topic shifts.
3. Use a different model as judge than the one being evaluated.
4. Ask the judge to reason before scoring.
5. Automate and version evaluations like tests.
6. Combine deterministic checks with LLM-based scoring.

---

Quick Reference

• TOOLS — deterministic tool and argument match plus trajectory validation
• SKILLS — activation tests plus rubric-based output quality
• PROMPTS — exact match where possible plus LLM-judge for qualitative tasks