inspect-ai

What it is and what it does

Inspect is a framework for evaluating large language models, created by the UK AI Security Institute. It provides a structured environment for running evaluations on any model, with built-in support for prompt engineering, tool use, multi-turn dialogue, and model-graded scoring. The framework includes over 200 pre-built evaluations ready to run out of the box.

The package has a substantial dependency graph (40 runtime dependencies including pydantic, fastapi, boto3, numpy, and AWS integration libraries) reflecting its role as a full-featured evaluation platform. It supports both Python development workflows and web-based UI interaction through a TypeScript/React frontend. Active maintenance and recent releases indicate ongoing development.

Use it for:

• Run standardized evaluations against multiple LLM providers to compare model performance on safety, reasoning, and capability benchmarks
• Build custom evaluation pipelines combining prompt engineering, tool use, and model-graded scoring for domain-specific tasks
• Integrate LLM evaluation into CI/CD workflows to validate model behavior before deployment
• Develop and share new evaluation techniques as Python extensions compatible with the Inspect framework

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

Inspect is a framework for evaluating large language models, providing built-in components for prompt engineering, tool use, multi-turn dialogue, and model-graded scoring across any model.

Yes, if you need to evaluate LLMs systematically. The framework is actively maintained, permissively licensed, and backed by a government security institute. The 40 runtime dependencies and Python 3.10+ requirement are substantial but typical for a full-featured evaluation platform. Install if you're building evaluation pipelines or comparing model outputs; skip if you only need lightweight model testing.

Install

inspect-ai on PyPI

pip install inspect-ai

uv add inspect-ai

poetry add inspect-ai

Installing inspect-ai

Before you install

Low friction installation with a wheel distribution. Active maintenance—released 2 days ago with a commit history through 2026-08-14. Requires Python 3.10 or later.

License in practice

MIT License permits commercial and private use with minimal restrictions, making it suitable for most projects without licensing concerns.

Quickstart

pip install inspect-ai

import inspect_ai
# See https://inspect.aisi.org.uk/ for evaluation setup and model configuration

Requires Python 3.10 or later. 40 runtime dependencies including pydantic, fastapi, boto3, and numpy—ensure your environment can resolve them.

Verify before relying

• Whether the 200+ pre-built evaluations are sufficient for your specific model types and use cases
• Performance characteristics when running evaluations against multiple models concurrently
• Extensibility mechanism details for custom elicitation and scoring techniques beyond built-in components

Package facts

Evidence: inspect_ai-0.3.258-py3-none-any.whl

Tags

More Artificial Intelligence packages

Further reading