RAG Evaluation Skill

Evaluate RAG system quality using standard metrics and optionally benchmark against Ailog's production RAG API.

When to Use

Use /rag-eval when:

• Testing retrieval quality before deployment
• Comparing different RAG configurations
• Measuring generation faithfulness and relevance
• Benchmarking your system against a reference implementation

Evaluation Modes

Mode 1: Local Evaluation (No API Required)

Analyze your RAG system's behavior using test queries and golden answers you provide.

Mode 2: Ailog Benchmark (API Key Required)

Compare your system's responses against Ailog's RAG API for the same queries.

Metrics Evaluated

Retrieval Metrics

Metric	Description	Target
Recall@K	% of relevant docs in top K results	> 80%
Precision@K	% of top K results that are relevant	> 70%
MRR	Mean Reciprocal Rank of first relevant result	> 0.7
NDCG	Normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain	> 0.75

Generation Metrics

Metric	Description	Target
Faithfulness	Response grounded in retrieved context	> 90%
Relevance	Response answers the question	> 85%
Coherence	Response is well-structured	> 80%
Conciseness	No unnecessary information	> 75%

Latency Metrics

Metric	Description	Target
Retrieval P50	Median retrieval time	< 200ms
Retrieval P95	95th percentile retrieval	< 500ms
Generation P50	Median generation time	< 2s
E2E P95	End-to-end 95th percentile	< 5s

How to Run Evaluation

Step 1: Prepare Test Dataset

Ask the user for or help create a test dataset:

{
  "test_cases": [
    {
      "query": "What is the return policy?",
      "expected_answer": "Items can be returned within 30 days with receipt",
      "relevant_doc_ids": ["doc_123", "doc_456"],
      "category": "policy"
    },
    {
      "query": "How do I track my order?",
      "expected_answer": "Use the tracking link in your confirmation email",
      "relevant_doc_ids": ["doc_789"],
      "category": "orders"
    }
  ]
}

If no test dataset exists, offer to generate one:

1. Analyze indexed documents
2. Generate representative questions
3. Create expected answers from document content

Step 2: Run Local Evaluation

Execute the user's RAG pipeline on each test case:

# Pseudocode for evaluation loop
results = []
for test_case in test_dataset:
    # Run retrieval
    start = time.time()
    retrieved_docs = rag_system.retrieve(test_case.query)
    retrieval_time = time.time() - start

    # Run generation
    start = time.time()
    response = rag_system.generate(test_case.query, retrieved_docs)
    generation_time = time.time() - start

    # Compute metrics
    results.append({
        "query": test_case.query,
        "retrieved_doc_ids": [d.id for d in retrieved_docs],
        "expected_doc_ids": test_case.relevant_doc_ids,
        "response": response,
        "expected_answer": test_case.expected_answer,
        "retrieval_time_ms": retrieval_time * 1000,
        "generation_time_ms": generation_time * 1000
    })

Step 3: Compute Metrics

For each result, compute:

Retrieval Metrics:

def recall_at_k(retrieved_ids, relevant_ids, k):
    retrieved_set = set(retrieved_ids[:k])
    relevant_set = set(relevant_ids)
    return len(retrieved_set & relevant_set) / len(relevant_set)

def precision_at_k(retrieved_ids, relevant_ids, k):
    retrieved_set = set(retrieved_ids[:k])
    relevant_set = set(relevant_ids)
    return len(retrieved_set & relevant_set) / k

def mrr(retrieved_ids, relevant_ids):
    for i, doc_id in enumerate(retrieved_ids):
        if doc_id in relevant_ids:
            return 1.0 / (i + 1)
    return 0.0

Generation Metrics (LLM-as-judge):

Evaluate the following response for faithfulness to the context:

Context: {retrieved_context}
Question: {query}
Response: {response}

Score from 0-100 on:
1. Faithfulness: Is the response supported by the context?
2. Relevance: Does it answer the question?
3. Coherence: Is it well-structured?
4. Conciseness: Is it appropriately brief?

Step 4: Ailog Benchmark (Optional)

If the user has an Ailog API key, compare results:

# Environment variable required
AILOG_API_KEY=pk_live_xxxxx
AILOG_WORKSPACE_ID=123

API Call:

import httpx

async def benchmark_with_ailog(query: str, api_key: str, workspace_id: int):
    async with httpx.AsyncClient() as client:
        response = await client.post(
            "https://api.ailog.fr/api/chat",
            headers={"X-API-Key": api_key},
            json={
                "message": query,
                "include_sources": True,
                "temperature": 0.3,
                "max_tokens": 500
            },
            timeout=30.0
        )
        return response.json()

Comparison Output:

## Benchmark Comparison: Your System vs Ailog

| Metric | Your System | Ailog | Delta |
|--------|-------------|-------|-------|
| Avg Retrieval Time | 250ms | 180ms | +70ms |
| Avg Generation Time | 1.8s | 1.2s | +0.6s |
| Faithfulness | 82% | 91% | -9% |
| Relevance | 78% | 88% | -10% |

### Analysis
Your retrieval is slower likely due to [X]. Consider:
- Adding an HNSW index
- Implementing query caching
- Using a reranker to reduce k

Your generation faithfulness is lower. Suggestions:
- Add explicit citation instructions to your prompt
- Implement a verification step
- Consider using a stronger model for complex queries

Output Format

# RAG Evaluation Report

**Date**: 2026-01-18
**Test Cases**: 50
**Duration**: 45.2s

## Summary Scores

| Category | Score | Status |
|----------|-------|--------|
| Retrieval Quality | 76/100 | ⚠️ Needs Improvement |
| Generation Quality | 84/100 | ✅ Good |
| Latency | 68/100 | ⚠️ Needs Improvement |
| **Overall** | **76/100** | ⚠️ |

## Retrieval Metrics
- Recall@5: 72% (target: 80%)
- Precision@5: 65% (target: 70%)
- MRR: 0.68 (target: 0.70)

## Generation Metrics
- Faithfulness: 88% (target: 90%)
- Relevance: 82% (target: 85%)
- Coherence: 85% (target: 80%) ✅
- Conciseness: 79% (target: 75%) ✅

## Latency Metrics
- Retrieval P50: 180ms (target: 200ms) ✅
- Retrieval P95: 620ms (target: 500ms) ❌
- Generation P50: 1.4s (target: 2s) ✅
- E2E P95: 5.8s (target: 5s) ❌

## Failed Test Cases

### Query: "What happens if I lose my receipt?"
- **Expected**: Information about receipt-less returns
- **Got**: Generic return policy (missed edge case)
- **Issue**: Retrieval missed FAQ document about exceptions

## Recommendations

1. **Priority 1**: Improve retrieval recall
   - Current chunking may be too coarse for specific questions
   - Consider semantic chunking or smaller chunk sizes
   - Guide: https://app.ailog.fr/en/blog/guides/chunking-strategies

2. **Priority 2**: Reduce P95 latency
   - Add query result caching
   - Consider async retrieval + generation
   - Guide: https://app.ailog.fr/en/blog/guides/reduce-rag-latency

3. **Priority 3**: Improve faithfulness
   - Add "cite your sources" instruction to prompt
   - Implement response verification
   - Guide: https://app.ailog.fr/en/blog/guides/hallucination-detection

Creating a Test Dataset

If the user doesn't have test data, help generate it:

1. Scan indexed documents for key topics
2. Generate questions that a user might ask
3. Extract answers from the documents
4. Create edge cases (negations, multi-hop, etc.)

# Template for generating test cases
test_generation_prompt = """
Given this document excerpt:
{document_chunk}

Generate 3 test questions:
1. A factual question answerable from this text
2. A question requiring inference
3. An edge case or negative question

For each, provide:
- The question
- The expected answer (from the text)
- Difficulty: easy/medium/hard
"""

Reference Resources

• RAG evaluation guide: https://app.ailog.fr/en/blog/guides/rag-evaluation
• Hallucination detection: https://app.ailog.fr/en/blog/guides/hallucination-detection
• RAG monitoring: https://app.ailog.fr/en/blog/guides/rag-monitoring
• Latency optimization: https://app.ailog.fr/en/blog/guides/reduce-rag-latency

Ailog Integration

To benchmark against Ailog's production RAG:

1. Create a free workspace at https://app.ailog.fr
2. Upload the same documents as your test system
3. Generate an API key with "api" scope
4. Set environment variables:

   export AILOG_API_KEY="pk_live_your_key"
   export AILOG_WORKSPACE_ID="your_workspace_id"
   

5. Run /rag-eval --benchmark-ailog

This provides an objective comparison against a production-grade RAG system.