Simple Calculator - Evaluation and Profiling

Complexity: 🟨 Intermediate

This example demonstrates how to evaluate and profile AI agent performance using the NVIDIA NeMo Agent Toolkit. You'll learn to systematically measure your agent's accuracy and analyze its behavior using the Simple Calculator workflow.

Key Features

• Tunable RAG Evaluator Integration: Demonstrates the nat eval command with Tunable RAG Evaluator to measure agent response accuracy against ground truth datasets.
• Performance Analysis Framework: Shows systematic evaluation of agent behavior, accuracy, and response quality using standardized test datasets.
• Question-by-Question Analysis: Provides detailed breakdown of individual responses with comprehensive metrics for identifying failure patterns and areas for improvement.
• Evaluation Dataset Management: Demonstrates how to work with structured evaluation datasets (simple_calculator.json) for consistent and reproducible testing.
• Results Interpretation: Shows how to analyze evaluation metrics and generate comprehensive performance reports for agent optimization.

What You'll Learn

• Accuracy Evaluation: Measure and validate agent responses using the Tunable RAG Evaluator
• Performance Analysis: Understand agent behavior through systematic evaluation
• Dataset Management: Work with evaluation datasets for consistent testing
• Results Interpretation: Analyze evaluation metrics to improve agent performance

Prerequisites

1. Agent toolkit: Ensure you have the Agent toolkit installed. If you have not already done so, follow the instructions in the Install Guide to create the development environment and install NeMo Agent Toolkit.
2. Base workflow: This example builds upon the Getting Started Simple Calculator example. Make sure you are familiar with the example before proceeding.
3. Phoenix tracing backend: Start Phoenix before running trajectory-based configurations in this example.

Using Docker Container for Phoenix

Start Phoenix using a Docker container with the following command:

docker run -it --rm -p 4317:4317 -p 6006:6006 arizephoenix/phoenix:13.22

Using a Separate Virtual Environment for Phoenix

Alternately, you can run Phoenix from a separate virtual environment than the one used for NeMo Agent Toolkit evaluation runs. In either case using a Docker container or a separate virtual environment is needed to avoid dependency and version conflicts between Phoenix packages and toolkit plus evaluator dependencies.

# Create a new virtual environment for Phoenix, must be performed in a different directory
uv venv -p 3.13 --seed .venv
uv pip install arize-phoenix
phoenix serve

Installation

Install this evaluation example:

uv pip install -e examples/evaluation_and_profiling/simple_calculator_eval

Run the Workflow

Running Evaluation

Evaluate the Simple Calculator agent's accuracy against a test dataset:

nat eval --config_file examples/evaluation_and_profiling/simple_calculator_eval/configs/config-tunable-rag-eval.yml

The configuration file specified above contains configurations for the NeMo Agent Toolkit evaluation and profiler capabilities. Additional documentation for evaluation configuration can be found in the evaluation guide. Furthermore, similar documentation for profiling configuration can be found in the profiling guide.

This command:

• Uses the test dataset from examples/getting_started/simple_calculator/data/simple_calculator.json
• Applies the Tunable RAG Evaluator to measure response accuracy
• Saves detailed results to .tmp/nat/examples/getting_started/simple_calculator/tuneable_eval_output.json

Understanding Results

The evaluation generates comprehensive metrics including:

• Accuracy Scores: Quantitative measures of response correctness
• Question-by-Question Analysis: Detailed breakdown of individual responses
• Performance Metrics: Overall quality assessments
• Error Analysis: Identification of common failure patterns

Running Nested Trajectory Evaluation

Evaluate a workflow that performs a nested tool call (power_of_two -> calculator__multiply) and inspect how it appears in the ATIF trajectory output:

nat eval --config_file examples/evaluation_and_profiling/simple_calculator_eval/configs/config-nested-trajectory-eval.yml

This command:

• Uses examples/evaluation_and_profiling/simple_calculator_eval/data/simple_calculator_power_of_two.json
• Runs the built-in trajectory evaluator
• Writes workflow trajectories to .tmp/nat/examples/simple_calculator/nested-eval/workflow_output_atif.json

To inspect the call hierarchy from the generated ATIF file:

python packages/nvidia_nat_eval/scripts/print_atif_function_tree.py \
  .tmp/nat/examples/simple_calculator/nested-eval/workflow_output_atif.json \
  --view ancestry \
  --item-id 1

Running Branching Nested Trajectory Evaluation

Evaluate a workflow where one top-level tool (power_branch) fans out to two internal tools (square_via_multiply and cube_via_multiply_chain) and each branch calls calculator__multiply.

nat eval --config_file examples/evaluation_and_profiling/simple_calculator_eval/configs/config-branching-nested-trajectory-eval.yml

This command:

• Uses examples/evaluation_and_profiling/simple_calculator_eval/data/simple_calculator_power_branch.json
• Runs the built-in trajectory evaluator
• Writes trajectories to .tmp/nat/examples/simple_calculator/branching-nested-eval/workflow_output_atif.json

To inspect one input item:

python packages/nvidia_nat_eval/scripts/print_atif_function_tree.py \
  .tmp/nat/examples/simple_calculator/branching-nested-eval/workflow_output_atif.json \
  --view ancestry \
  --item-id 1