Manage eval-gated experiments
Treat every lifecycle change as a production control action. Read current state
and results, then report one supported recommendation or block.
Current agent MCP is intentionally read-only: control-api does not yet enforce a
complete lifecycle transition table and evidence gate atomically.
Non-negotiable gates
- A request to review, inspect, explain, or recommend authorizes reads only.
- Never approve an experiment whose results are pending, whose required
guardrails are absent, or whose evidence reports a breach.
- Never convert experiment lift into . Only active real
traffic plus provider-causal, provider-complete ledger evidence can do that.
- Never supply an organization id. Project and tenant scope come from the
logged-in Caveman identity and server RBAC.
- Never execute a lifecycle mutation, even after user approval. Exact
strings are agent-generatable and are not proof of
human intent.
- Unknown states and server errors fail closed. Report exact
.
Step 1 — Load project and experiment
Prefer MCP:
text
caveman_context {}
caveman_experiment_get {"action":"get","experiment_id":"<id>"}
caveman_experiment_get {"action":"results","experiment_id":"<id>"}
Use
when the user has not named an id.
CLI fallback:
bash
caveman cloud experiments list
caveman cloud experiments show <id>
caveman cloud experiments results <id>
Stop if login, project, experiment, or results are unavailable.
Step 2 — Evaluate evidence
Report:
- current lifecycle state and safety class;
- control and candidate sample sizes;
- quality or eval result;
- latency, error, cost, retry, drop, and escalation guardrails when present;
- evidence cost;
- rollback or hold reason;
- whether result is pending, failed, promotable, or active.
Absence is not a pass. If a required field is absent, state
and do not propose approval.
Step 3 — Propose one action
Allowed actions:
- — only from a startable draft or queued state with configured graders;
- — only with complete passing evidence and a safety class the
current role may approve;
- — stop a non-active experiment the user no longer wants;
- — revert an active or harmful change through the server's linked
policy path. Current deployments may reject this honestly with
; never describe that response as a rollback.
Show recommendation and id:
text
Proposed action: approve experiment 7f...
Reason: candidate passed quality and every configured guardrail.
Execution: blocked until server-authoritative lifecycle and evidence gates ship.
Do not treat earlier generic statements such as "manage it" or "do what is best"
as mutation approval.
Step 4 — Block unsafe execution
Do not emit or run an executable lifecycle command. Explain that current server
does not yet enforce every evidence/state transition atomically. CLI and MCP
agent surfaces therefore expose experiment reads only.
Step 5 — Re-read after external operator action
If operator says they executed command, read detail and results again. Report
server-observed post-state, audit or result response, and any policy-delivery
status returned. Never infer success from operator intent alone.
Use this close:
text
Action: <action> <experiment-id>
Before: <state>
Server response: <status and cave_snake_code if any>
After: <re-read state>
Basis: experiment evidence only. Verified savings unchanged unless the signed
ledger independently records active, provider-causal real-traffic savings.