Metrics Catalog

Coalex uses a unified metrics table to store all types of metrics from your AI agents. This document covers both observability metrics (automatically captured) and quality metrics (computed from human corrections).

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Quality Metrics

Quality metrics are declared at evaluate() time and computed at resolve() time when a human reviewer provides corrections. They measure how close the agent's original output was to the corrected version.

Metric	Description	Range	Best For
f1	Token-level F1 score (precision + recall)	0.0 – 1.0	Extractive QA
exact_match	Binary: output matches expected exactly	0.0 or 1.0	Codes, IDs, categories
rouge_l	Longest common subsequence overlap	0.0 – 1.0	Summaries
bleu	N-gram overlap (machine translation standard)	0.0 – 1.0	Translation-style outputs
word_overlap	Share of the distinct words found in either version that appear in both (Jaccard); word order is ignored, and words added count against it	0.0 – 1.0	Keyword presence
contains	Binary: expected text contained in output	0.0 or 1.0	Required phrases
levenshtein	Normalized edit similarity (1.0 = identical)	0.0 – 1.0	Character-level comparison

Every score reads the same way: higher means the agent's output was closer to the reviewer's version. When no metric is declared for the corrected fields, Coalex scores the output as a whole with word_overlap and stores it under the field _full_output. The dashboard shows _full_output as "Whole output" and each metric under a plain-language name ("Words in common", "Sequence match", and so on), with the name above in the tooltip.

Choosing Metrics

• Use f1 or rouge_l for extractive QA where token overlap is meaningful.
• Use exact_match for structured fields like codes, IDs, or categories.
• Use contains to check if specific phrases or keywords appear in the output.
• Combine multiple metrics per field for more robust evaluation.

semantic_similarity was removed

semantic_similarity used to appear in this catalog. Its implementation returned a constant 0.0 for every pair of texts, so any field scored with it read as permanently wrong and pulled that agent's health score down for a reason that was not real.

It is no longer accepted: declaring it in evaluate() returns a 422 naming the metrics that do work. If you have it declared, move that field to rouge_l (longest-common-subsequence overlap) or f1. The name may come back if a real embedding implementation is written.

Declaring Metrics

decision = coalex.evaluate(
    request_id="req-123",
    input={"question": "What is the diagnosis?"},
    output={
        "diagnosis": "Acute bronchitis",
        "icd_code": "J20.9",
    },
    metrics={
        "diagnosis": ["rouge_l", "f1"],
        "icd_code": ["exact_match"],
    },
)

Metric Computation

Metrics are computed when resolve(decision="corrected") is called:

result = coalex.resolve(
    escalation_id="esc-001",
    decision="corrected",
    corrections={"diagnosis": "Community-acquired pneumonia", "icd_code": "J18.9"},
    reviewer={"name": "Dr. Jones", "email": "dr.jones@hospital.org"},
)

for m in result.metrics:
    print(f"{m.field}: {m.metrics}")
    # diagnosis: {"rouge_l": 0.45, "f1": 0.32}
    # icd_code: {"exact_match": 0.0}

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Observability Metrics

Automatically captured by auto-instrumentation and enriched by the Transformer.

Token Metrics

Metric ID	Category	Unit	Description
input	tokens	count	Input/prompt tokens
output	tokens	count	Output/completion tokens
total	tokens	count	Total tokens (input + output)

Performance Metrics

Metric ID	Category	Unit	Description
latency	performance	ms	Request latency in milliseconds
throughput	performance	req/s	Requests per second

Cost Metrics

Metric ID	Category	Unit	Description
total	cost	USD	Total cost for the request
per_token	cost	USD	Cost per token

Sustainability Metrics

Powered by ecologits.

Metric ID	Category	Unit	Description
energy	sustainability	kWh	Energy consumption
gwp	sustainability	kgCO2eq	Global Warming Potential (carbon footprint)
adpe	sustainability	kgSbeq	Abiotic Depletion Potential for Elements
pe	sustainability	MJ	Primary Energy consumption

Retrieval Metrics

Metric ID	Category	Unit	Description
document_count	retrieval	count	Number of documents retrieved
avg_score	retrieval	score (0-1)	Average relevance score

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Unified Metrics Schema

All metrics are stored in a single table:

Column	Type	Description
id	integer	Auto-generated primary key
agent_id	text	Agent identifier
account_id	text	Account identifier
request_id	text	Session/request identifier
metric_id	text	Metric name (e.g., energy, input, latency)
metric_type	text	Metric category (e.g., sustainability, tokens, performance)
value	float	The numeric metric value
metadata	jsonb	Additional context (model_name, provider, etc.)
created_at	timestamp	When the metric was recorded
prompt_version	text	Prompt version for A/B testing
reviewing_agent_id	text	For human review workflows
task_id	text	Associated task identifier

Metadata Structure

{
    "span_id": "b27edd86b453ff09",
    "model_name": "gpt-4o",
    "provider": "openai",
    "span_name": "ChatOpenAI",
    "unit": "kWh",
    "output_tokens": 143,
    "latency_ms": 2913.25
}

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Querying Metrics

By Category

SELECT * FROM metrics
WHERE agent_id = 'claims-bot'
  AND metric_type = 'sustainability'
ORDER BY created_at DESC;

By Specific Metric

SELECT created_at, value, metadata->>'model_name' as model
FROM metrics
WHERE agent_id = 'claims-bot'
  AND metric_type = 'sustainability'
  AND metric_id = 'energy'
ORDER BY created_at DESC;

Aggregate by Request

SELECT metric_id, SUM(value) as total
FROM metrics
WHERE request_id = 'req-123'
  AND metric_type = 'tokens'
GROUP BY metric_id;

Compare Prompt Versions

SELECT
    prompt_version,
    metric_id,
    AVG(value) as avg_value,
    COUNT(*) as samples
FROM metrics
WHERE agent_id = 'claims-bot'
  AND prompt_version IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY prompt_version, metric_id;

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Best Practices

1. Use request_id for session tracking — Group all metrics from a single request with coalex_context().
2. Use prompt_version for A/B testing — Compare metrics across prompt variants.
3. Monitor cost and sustainability together — Track both financial and environmental impact.
4. Combine quality metrics — Use multiple metrics per field for robust evaluation.