> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://evalgate.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# What EvalGate is for

> One paragraph and one diagram: trace to eval to gate.

# What EvalGate is for

EvalGate is **CI for AI behavior**. It helps AI teams stop the same failure from
shipping twice. You capture what your AI actually did, turn the bad cases into
test cases, and then block any future change that brings those cases back.

## The one idea behind everything

EvalGate is a single loop: **trace → eval → gate**.

```mermaid theme={null}
flowchart LR
    A[Real AI behavior<br/>trace] --> B[Reviewed failures<br/>become eval cases]
    B --> C[Promoted cases<br/>become a CI gate]
    C -->|blocks the next bad change| A
```

1. **Trace.** Your app records what the model did — inputs, outputs, tool calls,
   cost, latency.
2. **Eval.** A person reviews a real failure and promotes it into a reusable test
   case.
3. **Gate.** That case runs in CI. The next prompt, model, or retriever change
   that breaks it fails the build before it reaches users.

Everything else in EvalGate — dashboards, judges, playgrounds, monitors, reports
— exists to make one of those three steps faster or more trustworthy.

## What you do not need to know first

* You do not need an account to start. The first gate runs locally.
* You do not need to understand LLM judges, calibration, or online eval to read
  these guides. Each one explains only what it uses.
* You do not need to be an ML engineer. If you can follow a numbered list, you
  can use EvalGate.

## Up next

Learn how to [find your way around the app](./navigating-evalgate).