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I Ran 170 Agent Goals for $0.49. The Field Test Found 10 Issues That Unit Tests Never Would.
The article details the results of field testing an AI planning system that revealed significant flaws and improvements across multiple versions. Initially, the first version tested found 10 issues across 157 goals, emphasizing the inadequacy of unit testing which failed to uncover many design problems. The latest version confirmed the effectiveness of code reviews, which identified bugs before testing, thus enhancing overall system reliability. This evolution in testing demonstrates the need for more robust field testing to validate system capabilities.
MonitorConfidence: HighShort term horizon
Published 24 Aug 2026, 08:50 UTC10 min read
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Summary
TL;DR
- First field test (v0.1.0) found 10 issues across 157 goals for $0.30.
- Unit tests did not detect several critical design problems.
- Code review before testing in v0.2.0 confirmed 31 fixed bugs.
- Field test shifted from bug detection to bug verification process.
- Recent v0.2.1 confirmed zero unexplained deltas in performance.
Interesting facts
- The cost of field testing increased from $0.30 to $0.49 across versions.
- Unit tests failed to notice 57 of 65 assertion files were incorrectly formatted.
- The planner-critic system evolved from diagnostic to validation and finally to regression testing.