ankora 0.2.1

Local-first, CI-native regression testing for LLM and agent applications.

ankora

Turn the traces you already capture into regression tests that fail your CI when quality silently drops.

Teams have observability but no tests. ~89% of teams run some form of LLM observability, but only ~52% run evals — and quality is the No. 1 blocker to shipping LLM features to production. So prompt tweaks, model-version bumps, and silent provider changes ship undetected until users complain.

ankora closes that gap from the supply side: it replays the traces you already have as a deterministic regression suite, scores the outputs, and exits non-zero when quality regresses — so a GitHub Action can block the merge. Local-first, bring-your-own-keys, no account, no telemetry.

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60-second quickstart (no API keys required)

Install from source with uv:

git clone https://github.com/ankora/ankora
cd ankora
uv sync

Coming once published to PyPI: uv tool install ankora (or pip install ankora).

Now run the fully offline demo — it uses the built-in deterministic echo provider and deterministic scorers, so no network and no keys:

bash examples/run_demo.sh

You'll watch the full loop run → baseline set → gate and see the CI contract both ways: a green gate (exit 0) when the run matches the baseline, then a red gate (exit 1) after a Case is deliberately broken:

==> 3. Gate against the baseline (clean — expect exit 0)
No regressions — gate passed.
    clean gate exit code: 0
...
==> 5. Gate again (regression — expect non-zero exit)
1 regression(s) detected — failing the gate.
    broken gate exit code: 1

That's the whole idea: a regression makes the command exit non-zero.

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The core loop

In your own repo, the loop is four commands. Point target.provider at openai/anthropic in ankora.yaml for real replays (keys come from your env, below), or keep the keyless echo provider to try it out.

# 0. Scaffold ankora.yaml + an evals/ directory
ankora init

# 1. Turn an OpenTelemetry GenAI or Langfuse trace export into regression Cases
#    (format is auto-detected; force it with --format otel|langfuse)
ankora ingest traces.json --out evals/

# 2. Replay + score the suite; saves a run under .ankora/runs/
ankora run

# 3. Promote a good run to the baseline
ankora baseline set <run_id>

# 4. The CI entrypoint: replay, diff vs baseline, exit non-zero on regression
ankora gate

Inspect any two runs read-only (never fails the build):

ankora diff <baseline_run_id> <current_run_id>

Every command has --help; --config points at a non-default ankora.yaml, --target provider:model overrides the target, and --concurrency bounds parallel replays.

Configuration (ankora.yaml)

version: 1
suites: ["evals/**/*.yaml"]
target:
  provider: openai          # openai | anthropic | echo (keyless, for demos/CI)
  model: gpt-4o-mini
providers:
  openai: {api_key_env: OPENAI_API_KEY}      # keys read from env, never inlined
scorers:
  - type: exact             # deterministic, no key needed
    threshold: 1.0
  - type: regex
    pattern: '"country"'
  - type: json_schema
    schema: {type: object, required: [city, country]}
  - type: llm_judge         # needs a provider key
    judge: {provider: openai, model: gpt-4o}
    rubric: "Score 1 if factually consistent with the reference, else 0."
    threshold: 0.7
  - type: embedding_similarity
    model: {provider: openai, model: text-embedding-3-small}
    threshold: 0.85
gate:
  fail_on: regression       # "regression" (vs baseline) or "absolute" (vs thresholds)
  baseline: .ankora/baseline.json

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OpenAI-compatible endpoints

The openai provider can talk to any OpenAI-compatible endpoint — Google Gemini's OpenAI-compat API, OpenRouter, Groq, Together, or a local Ollama / LM Studio server — by setting base_url on the provider. Leave it unset to hit api.openai.com as usual. Keys are still read from the env var you name; ankora never sees or stores them.

Gemini (free tier) — get a key from Google AI Studio:

target:
  provider: openai
  model: gemini-2.0-flash
providers:
  openai:
    api_key_env: GEMINI_API_KEY
    base_url: https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/openai/
scorers:
  - type: llm_judge                       # judge over the same endpoint
    judge: {provider: openai, model: gemini-2.0-flash}
    rubric: "Score 1 if factually consistent with the reference, else 0."
    threshold: 0.7
  - type: exact                           # deterministic, no model needed
    threshold: 1.0

export GEMINI_API_KEY=...   # from Google AI Studio
ankora run

OpenRouter — one key, hundreds of models (openrouter.ai):

target:
  provider: openai
  model: openai/gpt-4o-mini                # any OpenRouter model slug
providers:
  openai:
    api_key_env: OPENROUTER_API_KEY
    base_url: https://openrouter.ai/api/v1

Embeddings caveat: many OpenAI-compatible endpoints expose only chat completions, not the /embeddings route. On those, prefer the llm_judge and deterministic (exact, regex, json_schema) scorers; use embedding_similarity only against a provider whose endpoint actually serves embeddings.

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Wire it into CI

Add a workflow to your repo that runs ankora gate on pull requests. Provider keys come from repo secrets — ankora reads them from the environment and never sees or stores your tokens.

# .github/workflows/ankora.yml
name: ankora
on: pull_request
jobs:
  gate:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: astral-sh/setup-uv@v5
      - run: uv tool install ankora      # once published to PyPI
      - run: ankora gate
        env:
          OPENAI_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.OPENAI_API_KEY }}
          ANTHROPIC_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.ANTHROPIC_API_KEY }}

A composite action that wraps those steps ships at .github/actions/ankora-gate. Commit .ankora/baseline.json (or promote a run with ankora baseline set) so CI has something to compare against.

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Why it's different

• Local-first & offline. Runs on your laptop or a CI runner. No account, no login, no hosted service — and no telemetry, ever.
• Bring-your-own-keys. Replays use your provider keys from env vars. We never carry token cost and never see your tokens.
• Neutral & framework-agnostic. Reads open formats (OpenTelemetry GenAI semantic conventions first). Your suite is plain YAML checked into your repo — no lock-in to a framework, provider, or storage backend.
• It fails your CI. The whole point: ankora gate exits non-zero on regression, so a quality drop blocks the merge instead of reaching users.

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v1 scope — and what's next

Shipped in v1:

• init — scaffold ankora.yaml + evals/
• ingest — OpenTelemetry GenAI and Langfuse traces → regression Cases (format auto-detected; override with --format {otel,langfuse,auto})
• run — deterministic replay + scoring, persisted runs
• diff — per-case comparison of two runs
• gate — replay + baseline diff + non-zero exit on regression (the CI entrypoint)
• baseline set — promote a run to the baseline
• Providers: openai, anthropic, and a keyless echo provider for demos/CI
• Scorers: exact, regex, json_schema (deterministic), embedding_similarity, llm_judge

Coming next (not built yet — no false promises):

• A scheduled drift watch (run on a cron against a live endpoint)
• Multi-step agent-trajectory record/replay with tool mocking

v1 targets single-turn LLM replay; recorded tool calls are kept as reference data but not yet re-executed.

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Development

uv sync
uv run pytest          # all provider calls are mocked; no live API calls
uv run ruff check
uv run ruff format --check

Releasing

Maintainers: see RELEASING.md. Publishing to PyPI happens automatically when you cut a GitHub Release, via Trusted Publishing (OIDC — no API tokens stored in the repo).

License

Apache-2.0 — see LICENSE and NOTICE.