Files
awesome-copilot/skills/phoenix-evals/references/production-guardrails.md
Jim Bennett d79183139a Add Arize and Phoenix LLM observability skills (#1204)
* Add 9 Arize LLM observability skills

Add skills for Arize AI platform covering trace export, instrumentation,
datasets, experiments, evaluators, AI provider integrations, annotations,
prompt optimization, and deep linking to the Arize UI.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Add 3 Phoenix AI observability skills

Add skills for Phoenix (Arize open-source) covering CLI debugging,
LLM evaluation workflows, and OpenInference tracing/instrumentation.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Ignoring intentional bad spelling

* Fix CI: remove .DS_Store from generated skills README and add codespell ignore

Remove .DS_Store artifact from winmd-api-search asset listing in generated
README.skills.md so it matches the CI Linux build output. Add queston to
codespell ignore list (intentional misspelling example in arize-dataset skill).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Add arize-ax and phoenix plugins

Bundle the 9 Arize skills into an arize-ax plugin and the 3 Phoenix
skills into a phoenix plugin for easier installation as single packages.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Fix skill folder structures to match source repos

Move arize supporting files from references/ to root level and rename
phoenix references/ to rules/ to exactly match the original source
repository folder structures.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Fixing file locations

* Fixing readme

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Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-04-02 09:58:55 +11:00

1.3 KiB

Production: Guardrails vs Evaluators

Guardrails block in real-time. Evaluators measure asynchronously.

Key Distinction

Request → [INPUT GUARDRAIL] → LLM → [OUTPUT GUARDRAIL] → Response
                                            │
                                            └──→ ASYNC EVALUATOR (background)

Guardrails

Aspect Requirement
Timing Synchronous, blocking
Latency < 100ms
Purpose Prevent harm
Type Code-based (deterministic)

Use for: PII detection, prompt injection, profanity, length limits, format validation.

Evaluators

Aspect Characteristic
Timing Async, background
Latency Can be seconds
Purpose Measure quality
Type Can use LLMs

Use for: Helpfulness, faithfulness, tone, completeness, citation accuracy.

Decision

Question Answer
Must block harmful content? Guardrail
Measuring quality? Evaluator
Need LLM judgment? Evaluator
< 100ms required? Guardrail
False positives = angry users? Evaluator

LLM Guardrails: Rarely

Only use LLM guardrails if:

  • Latency budget > 1s
  • Error cost >> LLM cost
  • Low volume
  • Fallback exists

Key Principle: Guardrails prevent harm (block). Evaluators measure quality (log).