Buyer template · Evidence scorecard · Updated 2026-11-11
AI Tool Evaluation Scorecard
Compare AI tools on the same real tasks with recorded outcomes, human effort, cost, and hard safety gates—not polished demos or an unreviewed average score.
When to use it: Use this after defining a short list and before approving a tool, replacing a workflow, or expanding an AI pilot to more people or data.
Freeze the test before running it
- Record the buyer decision, shortlisted tools, existing baseline, task owner, evaluator, and approval owner. Include the option to keep the current workflow.
- Choose 5-10 representative tasks that reflect actual work, including one difficult or failure-prone case. Record each task's input, expected outcome, and allowed data class before any vendor runs.
- Define the same success checks for every tool: correctness, completeness, source traceability when relevant, time to reviewed output, human corrections, and all-in pilot spend.
- Mark non-negotiable gates separately from scores: approved data access, acceptable privacy/security posture, required human approvals, and an available rollback or exit path. A failed hard gate cannot be averaged away.
Record evidence for every candidate
- For each tool and task, copy: task ID, tested plan/version and date, input or sanitized fixture, observed output link, expected-versus-actual result, and reviewer name.
- Classify each result as pass, partial, or fail. For partial or failed results, record the specific error, its impact, and whether a human caught it before it reached a user or system.
- Record elapsed time to a reviewed answer, number and kind of human corrections, retries, setup effort, and actual usage or seat costs. Compare the same unit of work rather than unlike vendor credit units.
- Repeat one task after a realistic input change. Record whether the result can be reproduced, inspected, corrected, and handed to another operator without relying on the original prompter.
- Preserve counterexamples and unresolved evidence; do not replace a failed production-like case with a polished demonstration or collapse high-severity failures into an average score.
Make and hand off the decision
- First decide whether every mandatory safety, permission, and approval gate passed. If any did not, choose hold or reject regardless of apparent speed or average quality.
- Compare task-level results against the existing baseline. Prefer the candidate with repeatable acceptable outcomes and manageable human review, cost, and operational ownership—not the highest unweighted demo score.
- Record choose, keep current, rerun, or reject; name the decisive evidence, uncertainty, owner, approved team/data/action scope, budget limit, and the next review trigger.
- Before rollout, hand off the test artifacts, failure cases, required human checks, rollback owner, and the exact conditions that require a new evaluation after a vendor, model, plan, workflow, or permission change.
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Related comparisons
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Not sure which stack fits first?
Take the stack quiz for a recommended starting point.
The deterministic quiz returns a recommended stack, avoid-for-now guidance, and a rollout note you can carry into this checklist.