Choosing the Right Capability from Evaluation Failures
Understand how to match evaluation failures to the correct AI capability such as retrieval for missing information, tool calling for action needs, or fine-tuning for model limitations. Learn common mistakes and when to combine capabilities for reliable AI features.
The previous lesson’s five questions pointed a failure at one of a few specific causes: missing information, a missing ability to act, or a genuine limit on what the model can do. This lesson takes those three outcomes and matches each one to the capability that actually addresses it, and spends real time on a mistake that’s easy to make even with the diagnosis already done correctly.
In this lesson, we will cover:
Why retrieval, tool calling, and fine-tuning aren’t a progression from simple to sophisticated
What each one actually fixes, and what it doesn’t
One feature needing two different fixes for two different failures at the same time
Where fine-tuning actually earns its place, and why that’s rare
How real products combine these capabilities rather than climbing through them
The three ways engineers get ...