Why AI evals are the hottest new skill for product builders | Hamel Husain & Shreya Shankar

Hamel Husain and Shreya Shankar teach the world’s most popular course on AI evals and have trained over 2,000 PMs and engineers (including many teams at OpenAI and Anthropic). In this conversation, they demystify the process of developing effective evals, walk through real examples, and share practical techniques that’ll help you improve your AI product. *What you’ll learn:* 1. WTF evals are 2. Why they’ve become the most important new skill for AI product builders 3. A step-by-step walkthrough of how to create an effective eval 4. A deep dive into error analysis, open coding, and axial coding 5. Code-based evals vs. LLM-as-judge 6. The most common pitfalls and how to avoid them 7. Practical tips for implementing evals with minimal time investment (30 minutes per week after initial setup) 8. Insight into the debate between “vibes” and systematic evals *Brought to you by:* Fin—The #1 AI agent for customer service: https://fin.ai/lenny Dscout—The UX platform to capture insights at every stage: from ideation to production: https://www.dscout.com/ Mercury—The art of simplified finances: https://mercury.com/ *Transcript:* https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/why-ai-evals-are-the-hottest-new-skill *My biggest takeaways (for paid newsletter subscribers):* https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/i/173871171/my-biggest-takeaways-from-this-conversation *Where to find Shreya Shankar* • X: https://x.com/sh_reya • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shrshnk/ • Website: https://www.sh-reya.com/ • Maven course: https://bit.ly/4myp27m *Where to find Hamel Husain* • X: https://x.com/HamelHusain • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamelhusain/ • Website: https://hamel.dev/ • Maven course: https://bit.ly/4myp27m *Where to find Lenny:* • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • X: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ *In this episode, we cover:* (00:00) Introduction to Hamel and Shreya (04:57) What are evals? (09:56) Demo: Exam