Anthropic Adds Plugin Evals to Claude Code: 6 Grader Types, a No-Plugin Baseline, and a CI Gate for Skills
Anthropic has printed a new plugin evals workflow for Claude Code. The claude plugin eval command runs a plugin towards life like prompts, grades what Claude produced, and compares the outcome with a run the place the plugin will not be loaded. It solutions 3 questions plugin builders couldn’t beforehand measure: does the ability set off, does it survive an edit or a new mannequin, and does it beat a naked mannequin.
Deployable: Yes. It runs on Claude Code v2.1.269 or later towards any listing with a plugin.json or .claude-plugin/plugin.json manifest, or a skills-directory plugin. Every eval run and choose grader is a actual mannequin name billed to your plan or API account.
What a case appears like
An eval suite lives in an evals/ listing contained in the plugin. Each case is a subdirectory holding a immediate.md and a graders/ folder. The immediate physique goes to Claude precisely as written, and @path mentions usually are not expanded. Frontmatter on immediate.md can set max_turns (default 10), timeout_seconds (default 300), mannequin, tags, and allowed_tools.
Graders are markdown information whose frontmatter units a kind, an non-obligatory weight, and an non-obligatory arm. There are 6 sorts. Four value nothing as a result of they’re computed from the transcript and the information on disk: regex, tool_used, tool_order, and file_exists. Two name a choose mannequin and add to the invoice: llm, which scores the reply towards prose standards you write, and baseline, which compares it towards a reference reply.
claude plugin eval init reads the plugin, asks what a good outcome appears like, proposes circumstances and graders, tries them, and writes the information. In CI, --bare <identify> writes a clean template as an alternative.
The quantity that issues is Δ
By default each case runs twice: a with-arm the place the plugin is loaded and a without-arm the place it’s not. Their distinction, Δ, is what the plugin contributed. If a case scores 1.0 in each arms, the plugin will not be why it handed. The docs instance output reveals a single case at WITH 1.00, W/OUT 0.33, Δ +0.67 throughout 6 runs, costing an estimated $0.41 and taking 74 seconds. A grader marked with-only, sometimes tool_used: Skill, is reported as an indicator and excluded from the rating, because the without-arm has no ability to hearth.
Anthropic calls out the most typical first discovering: a Δ close to zero with the tool_used: Skill grader failing, which suggests Claude will not be selecting the ability on pure phrasing. That is the defect claude plugin validate can’t see, as a result of it checks manifest syntax and schema quite than conduct.
Results land beneath evals/outcomes/<timestamp>/report.html with per-grader verdicts and choose votes. Where the account helps it, the report can also be printed to claude.ai except --no-publish is ready.
Cost and CI
A set makes roughly circumstances × runs × arms agent runs, plus 3 quick choose calls per llm or baseline grader per run, and outcomes fluctuate between runs. The documented CI invocation is:
claude plugin eval .
--trust-plugin
--json outcomes.json
--threshold 0.8
--model claude-sonnet-5
--judge-model claude-haiku-4-5
--no-publish
--max-cost-usd 20
The runner wants a Claude Code set up and credentials comparable to ANTHROPIC_API_KEY. Without --trust-plugin, an untrusted checkout is refused with exit 1 when there is no such thing as a terminal. Report issues by no means change the exit code, and --json suppresses progress output.
Interactive explainer
Key Takeaways
claude plugin evalscores life like prompts with 6 grader sorts; 4 are free,llmandbaselineinvoice a choose mannequin.- Every case runs with and with out the plugin by default; Δ is the one quantity that proves the plugin did the work.
- A Δ close to zero with a failing
tool_used: Skillgrader means the ability by no means triggers on pure phrasing. --threshold,--max-cost-usd, and--trust-pluginflip it into a CI gate; usage-limit errors can pretend a regression.- Requires Claude Code v2.1.269+;
claude plugin eval initwrites the primary suite for you.
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