What the environment needs to represent
A useful scenario separates the person’s goal from what the agent can initially observe. It also defines the task state, available tools, and what counts as a successful result. The person should not know hidden evaluation answers merely because those answers exist in the simulator.
For example, a shopper may ask for headphones without mentioning a travel deadline. A product recommendation that fits the budget can still fail the task if delivery arrives too late. The scenario tests whether the agent discovers the constraint and acts on it.
What changes during an interaction
An agent may ask a useful question, repeat an irrelevant suggestion, or take an action that changes the person’s options. The simulated person’s response should reflect the available information and the resulting task state. A fixed persona paragraph alone does not define this behavior.
Record which state is persistent, which preferences are discoverable, what can change, and how the scenario ends. These choices make failures inspectable and help distinguish a misunderstanding from a tool or policy failure.
How we would test validity
Helm’s evaluation protocol separates three questions: Is the person internally consistent? Do responses change appropriately when the experience changes? Do the important findings hold with independent people and tasks? Passing the first question does not answer the other two.
Compare candidate agents on the same versioned scenarios. Include helpful and deliberately degraded interactions, review disagreements, and reserve human evidence that was not used to design the population or tune the agent.
Where to start
Choose one capability, such as clarification, correction handling, or remembering a preference. Define the observation and action interface, then agree the outcome checks and human validation plan before increasing scenario breadth.
A first deliverable can be a small environment pack with replayable traces and explicit limits. Population forecasts, market-size claims, and deployment decisions require evidence beyond a convincing conversation.
Make the distinction explicit.
| Component | What it does | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Static test item | The prompt and expected result are fixed. | Useful for a bounded answer or action check. |
| Scripted interaction | A predefined path exercises a known sequence. | Useful for regression and interface checks. |
| Behavioral environment | Responses and task state depend on the interaction. | Useful for discovery, adaptation, and recovery studies. |