EvalRouter CLI

Evaluate models from your terminal: discover supported benchmarks and models, review a spending cap, run an evaluation, and export results. Requires Python 3.12 or 3.13. Distributed under the proprietary Kimpton EvalRouter SDK License.

Install and create your account

We recommend uv to install the CLI in its own Python environment:

uv tool install evalrouter
evalrouter --help

With pip, use pip install evalrouter in a Python 3.12 or 3.13 environment. uv selects a compatible Python for the CLI and downloads one if needed. If your shell cannot find evalrouter, run uv tool update-shell and restart your terminal. Upgrade an existing installation with uv tool upgrade evalrouter.

Complete command names with Tab

For zsh, add this line to ~/.zshrc after your compinit setup, then start a new terminal:

eval "$(evalrouter completion zsh)"

For bash, add this line to ~/.bashrc:

eval "$(evalrouter completion bash)"

Type evalrouter ru and press Tab to complete run. With evalrouter r, Tab shows matching commands such as run, resume and results. The shell setup only completes top-level command names and makes no API request. It does not change interactive prompts or run an evaluation.

This package was previously published as kimpton-evalrouter-sdk. The command, the kimpton_evalrouter import and every API are unchanged. To switch, run uv tool uninstall kimpton-evalrouter-sdk (or pip uninstall -y kimpton-evalrouter-sdk evalrouter) and install evalrouter.

The package supplies the evalrouter command; no repository checkout is needed. Create an EvalRouter account, verify your email, and follow the browser sign-in below. Package installation does not grant account access or evaluation credit.

Sign in with your account:

evalrouter login
evalrouter whoami

Approve the browser code. New accounts finish setup on the website; the CLI continues when that is complete. It selects your only workspace automatically. Production is the default API; evalrouter options lists --base-url and the other settings that apply to every command. No API key or credential-storage setup is needed for a normal sign-in.

CI and services can use EVALROUTER_API_KEY and EVALROUTER_WORKSPACE_ID supplied privately by a secret manager. Never put credentials in arguments, URLs, request files or logs.

Import LangSmith traces

The optional langsmith extra provides a local connector for completed agent runs. Create a LangSmith connection in Traces → Connect agent, then supply LANGSMITH_API_KEY and the connection's EvalRouter environment variables through your secret manager. The source key is never sent to EvalRouter.

pip install 'evalrouter[langsmith]'
python -m kimpton_evalrouter.langsmith projects
python -m kimpton_evalrouter.langsmith sync --project 'YOUR_PROJECT_ID' \
  --state './evalrouter-langsmith-state.json' --watch

The process must stay running for automatic imports. Its private checkpoint resumes progress across restarts. Set --since to an ISO timestamp to choose the initial import window. Inputs and outputs are bounded and field-name redacted; only activity recorded by LangSmith can be imported. This connector requires a package build that includes the langsmith extra.

Run an evaluation in one command

evalrouter run gpqa-diamond --model gpt-4o-mini

run matches the benchmark and model by slug, name or ID, suggesting the closest names after a typo. It creates a free quote, shows the coverage, published rates, spending cap and concurrency, and asks whether to start the run (Start run or Cancel). You are charged for actual usage at those rates, never more than your cap. Only a yes starts paid work. It then follows progress and prints the scores, the change from your previous completed run of the same benchmark and model, and the report link. In a terminal, missing choices are asked for; run evalrouter run alone to pick everything. --sample N or --full sets coverage, --max-cost USD the cap and --dry-run stops after the quote.

The model picker uses the selected benchmark's compatibility catalog. Where the catalog supplies reasoning controls, it offers that route's supported efforts or thinking-token budget and identifies fixed or provider-default settings. In a model checklist, Space or Enter selects a model; Tab continues from any row once enough models are selected. The quote rechecks the chosen settings.

Without a terminal (CI, agents, --json or --no-input) run never prompts and refuses unless both --yes and --max-cost are given:

evalrouter run gpqa-diamond --model gpt-4o-mini --max-cost 5 --yes --json

The idempotency key of each accepted quote is saved locally before the run is submitted (~/.local/state/evalrouter, or EVALROUTER_STATE_DIR; identifiers only, never credentials). Repeating the same command after a dropped connection resumes that run instead of starting another; --new starts a separate one. Afterwards, results RUN, export RUN --format html,json and wait RUN take the run's ID or a unique prefix of it. results --diff also compares with the previous run of the same benchmark and model; that takes a few more requests, so plain results does not. run --from RUN runs an earlier evaluation again as a new run with the same setup; other run options override it. Watching a run survives brief API outages such as a 503 during a deployment. If the API stays unreachable for 90 seconds (--disconnect-timeout SECONDS), the CLI stops watching, says so and prints the evalrouter wait command that reattaches; the run continues.

Resume a stopped run

evalrouter resume RUN_ID --dry-run
evalrouter resume RUN_ID

When a run stops early, for example because it reached its spending cap, resume quotes a new run that covers the same tasks. Tasks the original run already graded are reused at $0, with no model request and no fee; only the remaining tasks are rerun and charged, within a new cap. The quote shows the source run, how many tasks are reused and rerun, which are left out and why, the cap, and when the reusable evidence and the quote expire. Only a yes (or --yes) starts paid work; --dry-run never does. Without a terminal, pass both --yes and --max-cost USD. A running run is only watched. The original run and its results are never changed.

The accepted quote and its key are saved locally before submission, so repeating the command after a dropped connection, or after adding credit when the account was short, submits the same quote and cannot start a second run. An expired quote is replaced by a fresh one, which must be confirmed again if its cap differs. Repeating it with a different --max-cost or --include-cancelled choice gets a fresh quote instead; if the earlier submission already started a run, that run is shown and its scope stays as accepted. A run can be resumed once: resume on a run that was already resumed follows it to the newest run of that chain. A newest run that is still running is watched; a finished one is quoted and asked about again, even with --yes, and scripts are refused with its ID (continuation_exists, exit 2). Tasks stopped by cancellation or the time limit are rerun only with --include-cancelled.

Refused tasks and cancellations omitted without --include-cancelled remain excluded from this and every later resume. The quote asks you to acknowledge those permanent exclusions; scripts need --accept-left-out.

New quotes show unresolved effects separately as Pending. Safe tasks can continue while those cells retain their original provenance. A later resume rechecks the original outcome and can run it only when it is genuinely safe; a waived charge with an unknown provider outcome does not qualify. Nothing retries automatically. Older quotes without pending provenance keep their original permanent exclusions, except that an unknown provider outcome can be offered for an explicit new attempt (below).

A task whose provider call failed is decided from that call's record, never from its error name. If its original answer was stored, the resume grades that stored answer at no charge, with no new request (saved_response_cells). If the call is still unresolved, the quote shows the task as pending until the work that made the call has finished (services before September 30, 2026 wait for reconciliation, up to 24 hours after the call started; the quote says when). If the outcome is uncertain (the provider may have processed the request) or the provider did not bill a transient failure, nothing retries it on its own: --retry-unknown consents to pay for a new attempt of each such task within the same cap. You are never charged for the failed original, and a late original answer never adds a charge. If a new attempt fails the same way, a later resume can offer another, and each one needs your consent again (services before September 30, 2026 allow one new attempt per task). --retry-unknown-max N refuses (never trims) a quote with more such tasks. With your own provider connection, that provider may bill both requests, so --accept-duplicate-provider-charges is also required. The JSON quote reports these as continuation.unknown_retry.

Resume supports one model, one benchmark and one attempt per task on the reviewed native benchmark families (Inspect, SOB text and lm-eval) without a judge model, within the source run's evidence retention and on the same EvalRouter deployment. Comparisons, several benchmarks or attempts, judge-graded benchmarks, repository agents and your own benchmarks are refused rather than rerun. Graded tasks from runs that finished before resume evidence was recorded, including existing runs, cannot gain that evidence later, and results are never reused across EvalRouter deployments: after a deployment, those tasks are refused rather than reused or rerun. Tasks whose earlier charge or provider outcome is unresolved are never called until a fresh quote proves eligibility. A server without resume says so, and nothing is quoted or charged.

Lists

catalog, catalog --models, status, connections list and workspace list print a compact table sized to your terminal with one suggested next command; catalog hides benchmarks in review or unavailable unless you pass --all, and catalog -i browses them interactively; status -i keeps your run list live and opens a run with Enter. Home's Browse models (or catalog --models -i) opens a searchable model list. Enter shows the exact route, published prices and reasoning support; Escape or Left returns to the list, then Home. Loading can also be left with Escape or Left. Browsing never quotes or starts a run. Every list accepts --json, --jq '.data[].id' (a small jq subset), -w/--wide, --columns a,b, --sort COL (--sort=-COL descending), --filter KEY=VALUE and --limit N. Piped output stays JSON. Colour follows NO_COLOR, CI and TERM=dumb. Help, static benchmark and model pages, results and group status opened from Home stay visible until Enter, Escape or Left, including in a plain terminal.

run shows the quote (published rates and, when the quote states one, the minimum cap) before asking for the cap. The suggested cap is the standard $5, or the quote's minimum when that is higher, and the CLI says so. It refuses a cap that provably cannot start one task and asks before repeating a run that just finished (scripts pass --new). --all-metrics lists every metric and comparison.

Discover, quote, then run

evalrouter catalog --status active --json
evalrouter catalog --models --json
evalrouter catalog --slug BENCHMARK_SLUG --json

Choose a profile whose quote_availability.status is ready_for_quote and a compatible managed model route from those responses. An active catalog entry alone does not mean it is ready to run.

These three catalog reads are public, so the CLI sends them without your credentials: they never read the keychain or refresh a sign-in. If the API explicitly allows it (Cache-Control with max-age, and no no-store, no-cache or private), the CLI keeps a local copy for at most five minutes and says so on stderr when it uses one, except for online reads inside Home. Home quietly warms its two initial benchmark lists in the background using the same cache rules. --refresh reads the catalog now, asking caches along the way to revalidate, and fails rather than show an older copy, and --offline uses only a fresh local copy with no network. When a server marks a response no-store, the command still makes a request and no offline copy is retained. Availability shown from a copy is informational: a quote always checks it again. Workspace data, run status, results, quotes, credits and signed URLs are never cached. The copy lives in $XDG_CACHE_HOME/evalrouter (or ~/.cache/evalrouter; %LOCALAPPDATA%\evalrouter\cache on Windows, or EVALROUTER_CACHE_DIR), may be deleted at any time, and EVALROUTER_READ_CACHE=off disables it.

Save this as quote.json, replacing both uppercase identifiers:

{
  "model": {"kind": "managed", "route_id": "MODEL_ROUTE_ID"},
  "selection": {"profile_ids": ["BENCHMARK_PROFILE_ID"]},
  "coverage": {"mode": "sample", "sample_count": 3, "seed": 42},
  "max_charge_microusd": "1000000"
}

evalrouter quote --config quote.json --json

Review compatibility, coverage, rates, the cap, warnings and expiry. A quote starts no paid work. EvalRouter does not publish cost forecasts: charges follow actual usage at the quoted rates and never exceed max_charge_microusd, and the credit held at start is released as accounting settles. Older servers may still return the optional legacy field estimated_charge_microusd (a conservative worst case, not a forecast of spend); the CLI does not display it. The example's $1 platform cap is not a price guarantee or promise that a particular evaluation fits. Paid runs require available credit.

Persist the returned quote ID and an operation key before submitting:

evalrouter run --quote REVIEWED_QUOTE_ID --idempotency-key SAVED_OPERATION_KEY --json
evalrouter wait RUN_ID --wait-timeout 3600 --json
evalrouter results RUN_ID --json
evalrouter export RUN_ID --format json --output result.json
evalrouter export RUN_ID --format csv --output result.csv
evalrouter export RUN_ID --format html --output result.html

Replace RUN_ID with the returned ID. A lost submission response is recovered with the same quote and operation key; a new key may start separate work. Inspect terminal status, coverage, errors and billing alongside scores. A sample is not a full-benchmark score. Exports refuse overwrite by default; use the result's integer --version for repeatable reports.

Every command that saves a file prints its full path. An explicit --output file is used exactly and never replaced (exports accept --overwrite); a directory, or no file name, gets a default such as evalrouter-<run>.json or evalrouter-bundle-<namespace>-<name>-<version>.zip, moving to the next free -2, -3... name instead of replacing anything. Add --open or --reveal to open the saved file or show it in your file manager; nothing opens otherwise, and a missing viewer never fails the command.

Comparing runs

evalrouter compare RUN_ID RUN_ID --format html --output my-comparison

compare takes 1 to 8 finished runs of the same benchmark version, dataset, task population, task selection and output format in one workspace. Each run must be a managed or connected model run; comparison, agent and environment runs are refused, and so is a run whose export does not record one of these identities. It reads each run's summary export (export?format=summary: identities, frozen native summary, coverage, billing snapshot and export policy, with no sample rows) and saves comparison.json and sources/<run>.summary.json in a new private directory. --evidence downloads each run's full JSON export instead (sources/<run>.json) and also compares grader versions and graded task sets; the scores are the same. comparison.json holds each run's model identity (route, revision, protocol, recorded limits, generation and routing settings), coverage, errors, its frozen native summary with the headline's own denominator, and its settled EvalRouter charge. A run that did not complete, or graded fewer tasks than planned, is marked partial in comparison.json and in its own row of the terminal table.

For SOB Text runs that were continued (evalrouter resume), add --include-resumed (--chain is the same flag): each ID then names one chain, meaning the original run and its resumes, and the chain becomes one series. The service decides every task from the one run that graded it, re-derives the SOB native summary with the benchmark authors' code, and keeps ungraded tasks as errors with their codes. Each score is shown with its runs ("original + 1 resume") and its graded-of-planned count. If a resume replayed a reused answer and got a different score (reuse_score_mismatch), the report warns and the chain is not complete. evalrouter export RUN --include-resumed saves that chain result by itself. The command follows each run to its newest resume at the time you run it, so a later resume makes it return a longer chain; the saved chain documents keep the exact version.

sources/ keeps each export byte for byte, with its SHA-256 recorded. With --evidence, every graded sample must carry its scored answer by default: the final completion text for SOB, plus the per-sample metadata the export supplies (for SOB, the response's token counts and finish reason). Exports do not contain complete transcripts, reasoning, timings or per-attempt usage. Keep these files private. Use --without-raw (which implies --evidence) to archive runs whose answers have expired or are withheld by the export policy. A chain summary report downloads member exports only with --evidence. Different transports, limits or generation settings are listed as warnings. Nothing is regraded, and no deltas, intervals or winner are computed. --output NAME.json puts the sources in NAME-sources/.

Supported commands

catalog (--models, --slug or --environment), connections list/create/check/update/disable, quote, run, resume, status, wait, cancel, results, export, compare and open. Authoring your own benchmark package uses benchmark init/validate/bundle. credits shows the workspace balance, the amount held by running evaluations and what is available for new ones. It works with an evalrouter login sign-in or an API key with the billing:read scope. Credit is added on the website under Settings > Billing; the CLI never takes a payment. Run each command with --help for exact flags. A connected model's credential is never a command argument: connections create asks with hidden input in a terminal, and scripts use --key-stdin or --key-env NAME (connections update --rotate-key replaces it). Connection checks can send a small model request, and your model provider may bill separately.

For wait and run --wait, --progress auto shows elapsed time and status in an interactive terminal, with a percentage when validated processed and planned counts are available. Use --progress plain for structured progress or --progress off to suppress it. Redirected stderr and --json retain structured progress. A progress percentage counts processed samples; it is not a score. --progress json writes evalrouter.progress.v1 records on stderr, on every change and every 30 seconds: phase, processed and planned counts, errors, spend and elapsed time. evalrouter events RUN --follow prints the run's event log as JSON lines until it ends; --type, --tail N and --after N filter, start from the end and resume. evalrouter open RUN opens the run's live report page, also when an agent runs it with --json; run --open opens it as soon as the run starts. No browser opens in CI, over SSH, without a display, with --no-browser or with EVALROUTER_NO_BROWSER=1; the address is printed instead.

Use --config - for JSON on stdin. --json writes one result on stdout and progress on stderr. Exit codes: 0 success; 1 API/transport or failed run; 2 invalid input or rejected request (including a refused unattended run); 4 partial/cancelled waited run; 5 confirmation declined, nothing started; 6 stopped watching because the API stayed unreachable. Interrupting a local wait does not cancel server work. Use evalrouter cancel RUN_ID explicitly when cancellation is intended.

See the CLI documentation for account setup, model selection, spending semantics, recovery and versioned exports. The CLI uses the model API, which is also documented for direct HTTP integrations.

Author your own benchmark

benchmark init, benchmark validate and benchmark bundle run entirely on your machine: no account, no network request, and nothing from your package is imported or executed. The normative validator ships inside evalrouter, and its one dependency (pydantic) is an optional extra so the base installation stays thin (httpx and rich only). With pip, use pip install 'evalrouter[benchmark]':

uv tool install "evalrouter[benchmark]"
evalrouter benchmark init ./my-benchmark --namespace example --name my-benchmark
evalrouter benchmark validate ./my-benchmark
evalrouter benchmark bundle ./my-benchmark   # evalrouter-bundle-example-my-benchmark-<version>.zip

Without the extra these three commands stop before reading your package and report benchmark_extra_required with the exact install string; --help and every network command keep working. init writes an explicitly synthetic draft and claims no license: replace the tasks, rights, references and limits before submitting. Local validation is not platform admission — EvalRouter revalidates every submission on its own servers.

Live agent capture

Install evalrouter[tracing] and use from kimpton_evalrouter.tracing import TraceCapture. Create a connection in Traces and configure its restricted ingest key with EVALROUTER_TRACE_KEY and EVALROUTER_TRACE_CONNECTION_ID, alongside the API origin and workspace ID. Wrap each run with capture.agent(...), and calls with capture.model(...) or capture.tool(...). Use span.input(value) and span.output(value) to capture content. Call capture.flush() before a serverless invocation exits and capture.close() on shutdown. The optional OpenTelemetry dependency is isolated from the base HTTP client.

See the capture guide for complete examples, redaction settings, coverage, retention, and delivery limits.

Use client.traces for connection, trace, evaluator and finding resources, and client.datasets for curation, review, immutable versions and exports. These operations require the corresponding service release and workspace permissions.