Build an Eval Harness from Scratch

Hosted by Aki Wijesundara, PhD and Manu Jayawardana

Mon, Nov 2, 2026

2:00 PM UTC (30 minutes)

Virtual (Zoom)

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AI Engineering Bootcamp and Certificate: Build and Ship Production AI Agents
Dr. Aki Wijesundara and Manu Jayawardana
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What you'll learn

Structure a dataset, runner and scorer

Build all three from an empty file to a passing run in one sitting.

Add a regression check on every change

Wire the harness in so quality drops get caught before they ship.

Keep it fast enough that people run it

Make design choices that stop the suite becoming something everyone skips.

Why this topic matters

Everyone agrees you should have evals. Far fewer people have opened one and seen what it consists of. Stripped of frameworks it is three things: a dataset, a runner and a scorer. Building it by hand once makes every eval tool afterwards make sense and makes it obvious when you do not need one.

You'll learn from

Aki Wijesundara, PhD

AI Advisor | Educator | Google AI Accelerator Alum

Aki Wijesundara is an AI leader with a PhD in Machine Learning and extensive experience mentoring startups at Google’s AI Accelerator. With a career spanning both research and applied AI, Aki has taught 5,000+ students worldwide how to design and deploy production-ready AI systems.

He has worked across cutting-edge areas of applied AI, from LangChain and RAG pipelines to observability and large-scale deployment. As a researcher and educator, Aki bridges the gap between theory and practice, making complex systems approachable and actionable for engineers, founders, and product leaders.

Aki is also a frequent speaker and advisor to organizations adopting AI, helping them transition from experimentation to production at scale.

Manu Jayawardana

AI Founder | CCEO at TAI Labs | Co-Founder of Snapdrum

Manu Jayawardana is a serial entrepreneur with multiple AI startup successes.

He is also the Co-Founder of Snapdrum, an AI consultancy helping companies integrate and automate their businesses using AI. Through Snapdrum, Manu has worked with top startups and enterprises across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, advising on automation, product development, and AI strategy.

Currently, Manu is the Co-Founder & CEO of Krybe, an AI voice agent startup in London transforming how businesses automate customer interactions. His experience spans fundraising, scaling products, and leading teams to deliver production-grade AI solutions adopted globally.

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