Gates

Gates are the pass/fail criteria for your evaluation. They determine whether your agent meets the required performance threshold by checking aggregate metrics.

Note

Quick overview:

• Single decision: One gate per suite determines pass/fail
• Two metrics: avg_score (average of all scores) or accuracy (percentage passing threshold)
• Flexible operators: >=, >, <=, <, == for threshold comparison
• Customizable pass criteria: Define what counts as “passing” for accuracy calculations
• Exit codes: Suite exits 0 for pass, 1 for fail

Common patterns:

• Average score must be 80%+: avg_score >= 0.8
• 90%+ of samples must pass: accuracy >= 0.9
• Custom threshold: Define per-sample pass criteria with pass_value

Gates define the pass/fail criteria for your evaluation. They check if aggregate metrics meet a threshold.

Basic Structure

gate:
  metric_key: accuracy # Which grader to evaluate
  metric: avg_score # Use average score (default)
  op: gte # Greater than or equal
  value: 0.8 # 80% threshold

Why Use Gates?

Gates provide automated pass/fail decisions for your evaluations, which is essential for:

CI/CD Integration: Gates let you block deployments if agent performance drops:

letta-evals run suite.yaml
# Exit code 0 = pass (continue deployment)
# Exit code 1 = fail (block deployment)

Regression Testing: Set a baseline threshold and ensure new changes don’t degrade performance:

gate:
  metric: avg_score
  op: gte
  value: 0.85 # Must maintain 85%+ to pass

Quality Enforcement: Require agents meet minimum standards before production:

gate:
  metric: accuracy
  op: gte
  value: 0.95 # 95% of test cases must pass

What Happens When Gates Fail?

When a gate condition is not met:

1. Console output shows failure message:

   ✗ FAILED (0.72/1.00 avg, 72.0% pass rate)
   Gate check failed: avg_score (0.72) not >= 0.80

2. Exit code is 1 (non-zero indicates failure):

   letta-evals run suite.yaml
   echo $?  # Prints 1 if gate failed

3. Results JSON includes gate_passed: false:

   {
     "gate_passed": false,
     "gate_check": {
       "metric": "avg_score",
       "value": 0.72,
       "threshold": 0.80,
       "operator": "gte",
       "passed": false
     },
     "metrics": { ... }
   }

4. All other data is preserved - you still get full results, scores, and trajectories even when gating fails

Tip

Common use case in CI:

#!/bin/bash
letta-evals run suite.yaml --output results.json

if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
  echo "❌ Agent evaluation failed - blocking merge"
  exit 1
else
  echo "✅ Agent evaluation passed - safe to merge"
fi

Required Fields

metric_key

Which grader to evaluate. Must match a key in your graders section:

graders:
  accuracy: # Grader name
    kind: tool
    function: exact_match
    extractor: last_assistant

gate:
  metric_key: accuracy # Must match grader name above
  op: gte # >=
  value: 0.8 # 80% threshold

If you only have one grader, metric_key can be omitted - it will default to your single grader.

metric

Which aggregate statistic to compare. Two options:

avg_score

Average score across all samples (0.0 to 1.0):

gate:
  metric_key: quality # Check quality grader
  metric: avg_score # Use average of all scores
  op: gte # >=
  value: 0.7 # Must average 70%+

Example: If scores are [0.8, 0.9, 0.6], avg_score = 0.77

accuracy

Pass rate as a percentage (0.0 to 1.0):

gate:
  metric_key: accuracy # Check accuracy grader
  metric: accuracy # Use pass rate, not average
  op: gte # >=
  value: 0.8 # 80% of samples must pass

By default, samples with score >= 1.0 are considered “passing”.

You can customize the per-sample threshold with pass_op and pass_value (see below).

Note

Note: The default metric is avg_score, so you can omit it if that’s what you want:

gate:
  metric_key: quality # Check quality grader
  op: gte # >=
  value: 0.7 # 70% threshold (defaults to avg_score)

op

Comparison operator:

• gte: Greater than or equal (>=)
• gt: Greater than (>)
• lte: Less than or equal (<=)
• lt: Less than (<)
• eq: Equal (==)

Most common: gte (at least X)

value

Threshold value for comparison:

• For avg_score: 0.0 to 1.0
• For accuracy: 0.0 to 1.0 (representing percentage)

gate:
  metric: avg_score # Average score
  op: gte # >=
  value: 0.75 # 75% threshold

gate:
  metric: accuracy # Pass rate
  op: gte # >=
  value: 0.9 # 90% must pass

Optional Fields

pass_op and pass_value

Customize when individual samples are considered “passing” (used for accuracy calculation):

gate:
  metric_key: quality # Check quality grader
  metric: accuracy # Use pass rate
  op: gte # >=
  value: 0.8 # 80% must pass
  pass_op: gte # Sample passes if >=
  pass_value: 0.7 # This threshold (70%)

Default behavior:

• If metric is avg_score: samples pass if score >= the gate value
• If metric is accuracy: samples pass if score >= 1.0 (perfect)

Examples

Require 80% Average Score

gate:
  metric_key: quality # Check quality grader
  metric: avg_score # Use average
  op: gte # >=
  value: 0.8 # 80% average

Passes if the average score across all samples is >= 0.8

Require 90% Pass Rate (Perfect Scores)

gate:
  metric_key: accuracy # Check accuracy grader
  metric: accuracy # Use pass rate
  op: gte # >=
  value: 0.9 # 90% must pass (default: score >= 1.0 to pass)

Passes if 90% of samples have score = 1.0

Require 75% Pass Rate (Score >= 0.7)

gate:
  metric_key: quality # Check quality grader
  metric: accuracy # Use pass rate
  op: gte # >=
  value: 0.75 # 75% must pass
  pass_op: gte # Sample passes if >=
  pass_value: 0.7 # 70% threshold per sample

Passes if 75% of samples have score >= 0.7

Maximum Error Rate

gate:
  metric_key: quality # Check quality grader
  metric: accuracy # Use pass rate
  op: gte # >=
  value: 0.95 # 95% must pass (allows 5% failures)
  pass_op: gt # Sample passes if >
  pass_value: 0.0 # 0.0 (any non-zero score)

Allows up to 5% failures.

Exact Pass Rate

gate:
  metric_key: quality # Check quality grader
  metric: accuracy # Use pass rate
  op: eq # Exactly equal
  value: 1.0 # 100% (all samples must pass)

All samples must pass.

Multi-Metric Gating

When you have multiple graders, you can only gate on one metric:

graders:
  accuracy: # First metric
    kind: tool
    function: exact_match
    extractor: last_assistant

  completeness: # Second metric
    kind: rubric
    prompt_path: completeness.txt
    model: gpt-4o-mini
    extractor: last_assistant

gate:
  metric_key: accuracy # Only gate on accuracy (completeness still computed)
  metric: avg_score # Use average
  op: gte # >=
  value: 0.8 # 80% threshold

The evaluation passes/fails based on the gated metric, but results include scores for all metrics.

Understanding avg_score vs accuracy

avg_score

• Arithmetic mean of all scores
• Sensitive to partial credit
• Good for continuous evaluation

Example:

• Scores: [1.0, 0.8, 0.6]
• avg_score = (1.0 + 0.8 + 0.6) / 3 = 0.8

accuracy

• Percentage of samples meeting a threshold
• Binary pass/fail per sample
• Good for strict requirements

Example:

• Scores: [1.0, 0.8, 0.6]
• pass_value: 0.7
• Passing: [1.0, 0.8] = 2 out of 3
• accuracy = 2/3 = 0.667 (66.7%)

Errors and Attempted Samples

If a sample fails (error during evaluation), it:

• Gets a score of 0.0
• Counts toward total but not total_attempted
• Included in avg_score_total but not avg_score_attempted

You can gate on either:

• avg_score_total: Includes errors as 0.0
• avg_score_attempted: Excludes errors (only successfully attempted samples)

Note

Note: The metric field currently only supports avg_score and accuracy. By default, gates use avg_score_attempted.

Gate Results

After evaluation, you’ll see:

✓ PASSED (2.25/3.00 avg, 75.0% pass rate)

or

✗ FAILED (1.80/3.00 avg, 60.0% pass rate)

The evaluation exit code reflects the gate result:

• 0: Passed
• 1: Failed

Advanced Gating

For complex gating logic (e.g., “pass if accuracy >= 80% OR avg_score >= 0.9”), you’ll need to:

1. Run evaluation with one gate
2. Examine the results JSON
3. Apply custom logic in a post-processing script

Next Steps

• Understanding Results - Interpreting evaluation output
• Multi-Metric Evaluation - Using multiple graders
• Suite YAML Reference - Complete gate configuration