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The Problem

You are serving LLM responses via streaming (SSE or WebSocket). The LLM starts generating a helpful response… then suddenly veers into toxic, harmful, or off-topic territory. You cannot wait for the full response — by then, the user has already read the toxic content. You need to monitor the stream token-by-token and cut it off the moment things go wrong.

What You Will Learn

  • How to create a StreamingEvaluator with custom scoring functions
  • How to track toxicity, coherence, and topic coverage as tokens arrive
  • How to set early-stop policies that kill the stream on threshold breaches
  • How to register callbacks for real-time alerting
  • How to use evaluate_stream() for one-shot processing

Prerequisites

pip install ai-evaluation
No API keys required. All scoring runs locally.

Define Scoring Functions

The StreamingEvaluator accepts any function with the signature (chunk: str, full_text: str) -> float. Here are three examples:
import time
from fi.evals import StreamingEvaluator, StreamingConfig, EarlyStopPolicy


def detect_toxicity(chunk: str, full_text: str) -> float:
    """Keyword-based toxicity. In production, use a real model."""
    toxic_words = {"kill", "hate", "die", "stupid", "idiot", "destroy", "attack"}
    words = full_text.lower().split()
    toxic_count = sum(1 for w in words if w.strip(".,!?") in toxic_words)
    return min(toxic_count / max(len(words), 1) * 10, 1.0)


def check_coherence(chunk: str, full_text: str) -> float:
    """Vocabulary diversity as a proxy for coherence."""
    words = full_text.lower().split()
    if len(words) < 3:
        return 1.0
    return len(set(words)) / len(words)


def track_topic(chunk: str, full_text: str) -> float:
    """Check if the response stays on topic (cooking keywords)."""
    cooking_words = {"recipe", "cook", "ingredient", "heat", "stir", "bake",
                     "mix", "chop", "serve", "pan", "oven", "minutes", "food"}
    words = set(full_text.lower().split())
    found = words & cooking_words
    return min(len(found) / 3, 1.0)


def simulate_llm_stream(text: str, words_per_chunk: int = 3):
    """Simulate token-by-token streaming from an LLM."""
    words = text.split()
    for i in range(0, len(words), words_per_chunk):
        chunk = " ".join(words[i:i + words_per_chunk])
        yield chunk + " "
        time.sleep(0.01)

Scenario 1: Normal Response Completes Successfully

Create a monitor with toxicity and coherence checks. The stream completes without issues.
monitor = StreamingEvaluator.with_defaults()
monitor.add_eval("toxicity", detect_toxicity, threshold=0.2, pass_above=False, weight=2.0)
monitor.add_eval("coherence", check_coherence, threshold=0.4, pass_above=True, weight=1.0)

normal_response = (
    "To make a classic pasta carbonara, start by cooking the spaghetti "
    "in salted boiling water. While the pasta cooks, mix egg yolks with "
    "grated pecorino cheese. Pan fry the guanciale until crispy. Combine "
    "the hot pasta with the egg mixture and toss with the crispy guanciale."
)

for token in simulate_llm_stream(normal_response):
    result = monitor.process_token(token)
    if result:
        tox = result.scores.get("toxicity", 0)
        coh = result.scores.get("coherence", 0)
        print(f"  chunk {result.chunk_index}: tox={tox:.2f} coh={coh:.2f} "
              f"{'OK' if result.all_passed else 'ALERT'}")

final = monitor.finalize()
print(f"\nStream completed. Passed: {final.passed}  |  Chunks: {final.total_chunks}")
All chunks show “OK” and the stream completes normally.

Scenario 2: Toxic Turn — Stream Gets Cut

The response starts fine, then turns toxic. The EarlyStopPolicy.strict() policy kills the stream immediately on the first violation.
monitor = StreamingEvaluator.for_safety(toxicity_threshold=0.3)
monitor.add_eval(
    "toxicity", detect_toxicity, threshold=0.15, pass_above=False, weight=2.0,
)
monitor.set_policy(EarlyStopPolicy.strict())

toxic_response = (
    "Here's a recipe for chocolate cake. First, preheat your oven "
    "to 350 degrees. Then I hate to say this but you should destroy "
    "all the stupid ingredients. Kill the recipe and die. "
    "Anyway, mix the flour with sugar."
)

for token in simulate_llm_stream(toxic_response):
    result = monitor.process_token(token)
    if result:
        tox = result.scores.get("toxicity", 0)
        status = "OK" if result.all_passed else "!!! TOXIC"
        print(f"  chunk {result.chunk_index}: tox={tox:.2f}  {status}")
        if result.should_stop:
            print(f"\n  >>> STREAM CUT at chunk {result.chunk_index}")
            print(f"  >>> Reason: {result.stop_reason}")
            break

final = monitor.finalize()
print(f"\n  Early stopped: {final.early_stopped}")
print(f"  Text before cut: '{final.final_text[:80]}...'")
Expected output:
  chunk 0: tox=0.00  OK
  chunk 1: tox=0.00  OK
  chunk 2: tox=0.00  OK
  chunk 3: tox=0.18  !!! TOXIC

  >>> STREAM CUT at chunk 3
  >>> Reason: toxicity threshold exceeded

  Early stopped: True
  Text before cut: 'Here's a recipe for chocolate cake. First, preheat your oven to 350...'
The user only sees the safe portion of the response. The toxic content is never delivered.

Scenario 3: Topic Drift Detection

The response starts on-topic (bread baking) but gradually drifts into physics. The topic score degrades over time.
monitor = StreamingEvaluator.for_quality(min_chunk_size=10)
monitor.add_eval("on_topic", track_topic, threshold=0.3, pass_above=True)
monitor.add_eval("coherence", check_coherence, threshold=0.4, pass_above=True)

drifting_response = (
    "To bake bread, you need flour, water, yeast, and salt. "
    "Mix the ingredients and knead the dough for ten minutes. "
    "Speaking of minutes, time is a fascinating concept in physics. "
    "Einstein showed that time is relative. The speed of light "
    "is approximately 300 million meters per second. Quantum mechanics "
    "suggests that particles exist in superposition until observed."
)

for token in simulate_llm_stream(drifting_response, words_per_chunk=5):
    result = monitor.process_token(token)
    if result:
        topic = result.scores.get("on_topic", 0)
        bar = "#" * int(topic * 10)
        print(f"  chunk {result.chunk_index}: topic={topic:.2f} |{bar:<10}| "
              f"{'on-topic' if topic >= 0.3 else 'DRIFTING'}")

final = monitor.finalize()
print(f"\nFinal passed: {final.passed}")
You can see the topic score start high (cooking keywords present) then drop as the response shifts to physics.

Scenario 4: Real-Time Alerting with Callbacks

Register callbacks that fire on every chunk violation or emergency stop. Use these for logging, metrics, or alerting.
incidents = []


def on_chunk_alert(chunk_result):
    """Called after every chunk. Log violations."""
    if not chunk_result.all_passed:
        incidents.append({
            "chunk": chunk_result.chunk_index,
            "scores": dict(chunk_result.scores),
        })


def on_emergency_stop(reason, text):
    """Called when stream is killed."""
    incidents.append({
        "type": "EMERGENCY_STOP",
        "reason": str(reason),
        "text_length": len(text),
    })


monitor = StreamingEvaluator(
    config=StreamingConfig(
        min_chunk_size=5,
        on_chunk_callback=on_chunk_alert,
        on_stop_callback=on_emergency_stop,
        enable_early_stop=True,
    ),
)
monitor.add_eval(
    "toxicity", detect_toxicity, threshold=0.1, pass_above=False, weight=1.0,
)

adversarial = (
    "I'd be happy to help! However, I hate people who are stupid "
    "and they should all die. Just kidding! Let me actually help you."
)

for token in simulate_llm_stream(adversarial):
    result = monitor.process_token(token)
    if result and result.should_stop:
        break
monitor.finalize()

print(f"Incidents logged: {len(incidents)}")
for inc in incidents:
    if inc.get("type") == "EMERGENCY_STOP":
        print(f"  STOP: {inc['reason']}")
    else:
        print(f"  Violation at chunk {inc['chunk']}: "
              f"toxicity={inc['scores'].get('toxicity', 0):.2f}")

Scenario 5: One-Shot Stream Check

If you already have a generator, pass it directly to evaluate_stream() for a single-call check.
monitor = StreamingEvaluator.with_defaults()
monitor.add_eval("coherence", check_coherence, threshold=0.5, pass_above=True, weight=1.0)
monitor.add_eval("on_topic", track_topic, threshold=0.3, pass_above=True, weight=1.0)

stream = simulate_llm_stream(
    "Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Mix flour and butter. "
    "Bake for 25 minutes until golden brown. Serve warm."
)
final = monitor.evaluate_stream(stream)

print(f"Quick check: passed={final.passed}")
print(f"Scores: {final.final_scores}")
print(f"\n{final.summary()}")

What to Try Next

You now have real-time safety monitoring. Next, learn how to auto-generate an entire test pipeline from a plain-English description of your application.

Next: AutoEval

Describe your app and get an auto-configured testing pipeline you can export to CI/CD.