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Real-SWE: Benchmarking AI models on private, real-world, enterprise codebases

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Re: Real-SWE: Benchmarking AI models on private, real-world, enterprise codebases

#161
post #90

We built a “code atlas” that provides the LLM with a semantically queryable map of how things connect and relate in a very large and sprawling codebase that evolved over 15 years. It tends to dramatically reduce the length of time models have to spend reading code while also making sure they are aware (within their context window) of nuances that are important that might be missed were they forced to just rely on rea…

How did you organize the atlas? I've tried a few things including embeddings and clustering files based on how often they change in the same commits, haven't yet found anything I want to bake into my tooling.

A bunch of things. First off, I got Astra to build a semantic map itself. So, not using embeddings. Just Astra looking at our Helm charts and then the underlying repositories to see how the different parts of the system talk to each other and rely on each other.

It also had access to our internal docs (Confluence), JIRAs, Slack conversation history… All via MCPs. So it could dig around to its heart’s content as would a human developer trying to figure out the same problem.

I did also add a Vectorize database (the whole thing is Cloudflare hosted behind zero trust OAuth) as a second step and that can be helpful in surfacing concepts via the atlas’ MCP interface.

Re: Real-SWE: Benchmarking AI models on private, real-world, enterprise codebases

#162
post #94
post #90

We built a “code atlas” that provides the LLM with a semantically queryable map of how things connect and relate in a very large and sprawling codebase that evolved over 15 years. It tends to dramatically reduce the length of time models have to spend reading code while also making sure they are aware (within their context window) of nuances that are important that might be missed were they forced to just rely on rea…

is this like Aider's repo map?

I think it’s more than what Aider gives you, because this is a semantic atlas as well as just a symbol lookup.

Re: Real-SWE: Benchmarking AI models on private, real-world, enterprise codebases

#163

I built exactly this using my own codebases. The setup isn’t that complex; split the git history to just before the change, sandbox the agent with everything they will need at that commit and lightly modify rules so they don’t go searching outside the box. Then they get the same prompt (usually the ticket that began the work) and are graded against the accepted PR. The thing that takes the most time is finding the ex…

Pretty cool to hear about your process - I've been thinking about this space a lot so have some context about pain points here.

I've found that building a benchmark is something that's easy-ish on the surface level, but has many layers of technical complexity the deep you go down the rabbit hole.

For example, a tangent on grading. Do you use test passing and/or LLM graders? If you're using an LLM, it's fairly easy to spin up a basic LLM grader. But - is that grader calibrated? Is it biasing towards same-model agents? How many results do you need to be above the noise floor? What is it even measuring, and is that aligned with what you care about? Does it have the right information to make those judgement calls?

I'm super curious how what you've been using this workflow for? Also happy to answer any questions / discuss further!

Re: Real-SWE: Benchmarking AI models on private, real-world, enterprise codebases

#164
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just earlier Opus 5 was supposed to migrate a Python codebase from kafka-python client-per-send to a client singleton. It decided it should add a partition key "that nobody asked for" which it admitted to at the end of the implementation. It randomly decided going from no explicit partition key which would randomly add to a Kafka partition to partioning key company was the right solution. In fact, that was fairly cou…

This is why I like to really interrogate Claude on what it’s planning to do, what the implementation will look like etc before writing code. Without enough direction and time thinking about it, it can definitely go in an unintended direction

I usually use Fable with superpowers to generate plans and do subagent driven development but unfortunately I was at my Fable weekly limit with some other usage left.

I forgot how awful using Opus 5 directly is.

Re: Real-SWE: Benchmarking AI models on private, real-world, enterprise codebases

#165

I built exactly this using my own codebases. The setup isn’t that complex; split the git history to just before the change, sandbox the agent with everything they will need at that commit and lightly modify rules so they don’t go searching outside the box. Then they get the same prompt (usually the ticket that began the work) and are graded against the accepted PR. The thing that takes the most time is finding the ex…

Pretty cool to hear about your process - I've been thinking about this space a lot so have some context about pain points here. I've found that building a benchmark is something that's easy-ish on the surface level, but has many layers of technical complexity the deep you go down the rabbit hole. For example, a tangent on grading. Do you use test passing and/or LLM graders? If you're using an LLM, it's fairly easy to…

Yes, I'm with you 100% on the setup. You can go as deep as you want down the hole. At some point I had ask myself what I was really after with the benchmarks and where the line of diminishing returns was (and more importantly, was I really getting generalizable results).

I'm currently using a 2 tier grading system, one pass mechanical (LLM graded) one pass human. The grading ranges from -1 to 0 for the mechanical pass and -1 to 1 for the human pass. A model that does everything competently passed with a score of 0. Non-pass gets a -1. For the mechanical pass that's it. For the human pass there's a chance to get an extra point for exceptional work. Accepting the subjectivity in the human pass was part of the "what am I doing this for" point from above.

The scores then don't get read left-to-right and summed, but rather vertically per task and category. The temp setting as another commenter noted means you can't say anything definitive about the quality from a single run. What I think you can tell is 1) per task, who is the outlier in either direction and investigate, 2) how a task is generally handled by the models and 3) in the aggregate, who is dropping and gaining points consistently and does that change per task type. In the end, it's high touch. It doesn't give you one number to cut or keep a model. It tells you where to look and where not to.

You're the second person running an evaluation business to express interest, maybe I should start one as well ;) I will be reading your blog posts to see if there's anything I can adopt. If I was to give you the objection I would pose if this was an MBA brainstorming sessions I would ask:

Who are you targeting? and if the answer is engineers, what's to stop them from using the LLM to do it themselves? The problem space exists in the easy/hard domain; easy to set up, hard to refine because of nuance and specifics. Moreover, an engineer whose job might be under pressure because of LLMs would be highly motivated and highly capable to create a testing and evaluation setup and "own" this part of the process since it can't be replaced by an LLM.

Personally, I think this space is good consulting territory. There is hard-won knowledge that is valuable and sale-able, but beyond the basic setup, everything has to be tailored. It's also going to be hard to get people into a product moat. Git and IDEs give customers (if they are engineers) all the tools they need for this work and they already know how to use them.

One last note of your comment about same model agents. This is definitely something I have noticed. It's probably structural, but models absolutely prefer their own outputs to others. You can also move them toward agreement or disagreement by telling them that their model (in another session) produced some output. Kimi in particular will dunk on other models and promote what it thinks is its own output. Kimi is also highly sensitive to being bench marked. I have a specific audit script that goes through thinking traces to see if the model realizes it's being tested. Kimi figures it out more than any other model and will dig big time to find other results if you don't completely isolate it. Claude gets pissy if it thinks you are trying to benchmark it. Fable has inserted several times "not under testing" and "not a competitor" when left to its own committing. Fable is also very good at setting up open weights models and testing them. They must have spent a lot of time going for thoroughness and scientific method in training.

Re: Real-SWE: Benchmarking AI models on private, real-world, enterprise codebases

#166
Suspect there a lot of methodology flaws. Depends a lot on codebase context but the first line of the exposed prompt says "Monday" - which monday, UTC? Unless a small task set is exposed we cannot be sure if this variance is due to benchmark or models. Also very surprising to see GLM/ other models perform better on few tasks.

Currently this is a big TRUST ME BRO

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