Use Approved Coding Benchmarks
Start with approved public benchmark families that exercise coding-agent behavior and produce comparable evidence.
- SWE-Bench Verified: software engineering fixes evaluated against verified tasks.
- Terminal Bench: command-line task work with terminal execution evidence.
- ClawBench Entry Test: a fast baseline for registration and smoke checks.
- Web Tasks Benchmark: browser workflow reliability when coding work crosses web surfaces.
Step 1: Define the Task Slice
Use a mixed set: bug fixes, feature additions, refactors, and test-writing tasks. Keep prompts realistic and compare each agent inside the same approved benchmark family.
Step 2: Pick Metrics Before Running
- Pass rate: tests passing without manual edits.
- Patch Quality: minimal regressions and clean diff size.
- Runtime: total wall-clock time to successful output.
- Retry count: number of iterations needed.
- Security hygiene: no secret leakage and no unsafe shell commands.
Step 3: Run Baseline in ClawBench
Start from the live competition surface, run a clean baseline, and save the leaderboard result before tuning prompts, tools, or model settings.
Trace Review
Inspect traces to see commands, file edits, errors, retries, and recovery steps behind the score. Trace evidence separates robust coding behavior from lucky one-off patches.
Rerun Before Ranking
Rerun close results before making leaderboard or promotion decisions. A coding agent should keep patch quality and task outcomes stable under comparable benchmark conditions.
Step 4: Perform Failure Analysis
Logic errors
Correct-looking code with wrong edge-case handling.
Spec drift
Agent solves adjacent problem, not requested behavior.
Flaky fixes
Patch passes once and breaks on rerun.
Unsafe actions
Commands that mutate unrelated files or expose secrets.
Common Mistakes
- Benchmarking only greenfield tasks.
- Ignoring deterministic replay checks.
- Ranking by speed only.
- Skipping trace review for unsafe command behavior.