langchain_md_files/concepts/evaluation.mdx

# Evaluation
<span data-heading-keywords="evaluation,evaluate"></span>

Evaluation is the process of assessing the performance and effectiveness of your LLM-powered applications.
It involves testing the model's responses against a set of predefined criteria or benchmarks to ensure it meets the desired quality standards and fulfills the intended purpose.
This process is vital for building reliable applications.

![](/img/langsmith_evaluate.png)

[LangSmith](https://docs.smith.langchain.com/) helps with this process in a few ways:

- It makes it easier to create and curate datasets via its tracing and annotation features
- It provides an evaluation framework that helps you define metrics and run your app against your dataset
- It allows you to track results over time and automatically run your evaluators on a schedule or as part of CI/Code

To learn more, check out [this LangSmith guide](https://docs.smith.langchain.com/concepts/evaluation).