Align Human

Measure whether your automatic judge agrees with human judgment, detect where and why they disagree, and build a roadmap to reduce human review over time.

When to Activate

• You have a working judge/grader and 50+ human-labeled examples
• You want to know if the judge is trustworthy enough to replace human review
• You've noticed the judge's decisions being overturned by humans
• You're preparing to deploy an evaluation as a production gate

Checklist

You MUST create a task for each item and complete them in order:

1. Load paired data — match judge verdicts with human labels
2. Measure TPR/TNR — confusion matrix + per-stratum breakdown
3. Calculate agreement — Cohen's kappa, Gwet's AC1, systematic bias
4. Run bias detection — 5 systematic bias checks
5. Analyze disagreements — cluster patterns + diagnose root causes
6. Build human-reduction roadmap — 4-phase transition plan
7. Confirm and record — one confirmation, then write results

Fast path: run the bundled script

Don't hand-write the calibration statistics — that is exactly where subtle bugs hide. Run the bundled, tested script (scripts/calibration.py, standard library only, no OpenJudge dependency):

python scripts/calibration.py --pairs pairs.jsonl                 # one paired file, OR
python scripts/calibration.py --verdicts verdicts.jsonl --labels labels.jsonl --stratum-key difficulty

Paired rows look like {"id","judge":"pass|fail","human":"pass|fail","stratum"?} (judge/human may also be 1/0). It prints the confusion matrix, TPR/TNR/F1 with bootstrap 95% CIs, Cohen's kappa, Gwet's AC1 (auto-flags the kappa paradox), directional bias, per-stratum TPR/TNR, and the calibration gate verdict (calibrated / not_calibrated / insufficient_evidence; exit code 0 only if calibrated). --json for machine output, --self-test to verify it.

Always report and interpret the actual numbers the script returns — TPR/TNR (with their 95% CIs), Cohen's kappa, Gwet's AC1, directional bias, per-stratum TPR/TNR, and the gate verdict — never just state that you ran it. If you don't yet have the paired verdicts/labels, say exactly what's missing (e.g. the judge verdicts file, or N more labels per class).

The Steps below explain what each number means and how to act on it — read them to interpret the script's output. The inline snippets are the reference behind the script; you normally just run the script rather than re-implementing it.

Step 1: Load and Pair Data

Human labels live in labels/<grader_name>.jsonl, one row per judged sample. Keep them separate from the dataset so they can be re-paired with any judge run:

{"id": "sample_017", "label": "pass",   # "pass"|"fail" (or 1/0); joins to a dataset row id
 "annotator": "alice", "rationale": "Order number matches context.",
 "timestamp": "2026-06-20T10:00:00Z", "schema_version": 1}

Match judge verdicts with human labels:

import json

# Load human labels and judge verdicts
labels = {item["id"]: item["label"] for item in json.load(open("labels.jsonl"))}
verdicts = json.load(open("runs/verdicts-dev.jsonl"))

# Pair them
paired = []
for v in verdicts:
    if v["id"] in labels:
        paired.append({
            "id": v["id"],
            "judge": v["verdict"],   # "pass" or "fail"
            "human": labels[v["id"]], # "pass" or "fail"
        })

print(f"Paired: {len(paired)}, Unmatched: {len(verdicts) - len(paired)}")

# Warn if severe class imbalance
pass_rate = sum(1 for p in paired if p["human"] == "pass") / len(paired)
if pass_rate > 0.8 or pass_rate < 0.2:
    print(f"WARNING: Human label pass rate is {pass_rate:.0%} — "
          "kappa may be paradoxically low. Use Gwet's AC1 as complement.")

Step 2: Measure TPR/TNR

Build a confusion matrix and compute per-stratum metrics:

from openjudge.analyzer.validation import (
    AccuracyAnalyzer, F1ScoreAnalyzer,
    FalsePositiveAnalyzer, FalseNegativeAnalyzer,
)

# Convert to OpenJudge-compatible dataset with labels
analysis_dataset = [
    {"query": p.get("query", ""), "response": p.get("response", ""),
     "label": 1 if p["human"] == "pass" else 0}
    for p in paired
]

# Binary grader results (1=pass, 0=fail)
grader_results = [
    GraderScore(name="judge", score=1.0 if p["judge"] == "pass" else 0.0, reason="")
    for p in paired
]

accuracy = AccuracyAnalyzer().analyze(analysis_dataset, grader_results, label_path="label")
f1 = F1ScoreAnalyzer().analyze(analysis_dataset, grader_results, label_path="label")
fpr = FalsePositiveAnalyzer().analyze(analysis_dataset, grader_results, label_path="label")
fnr = FalseNegativeAnalyzer().analyze(analysis_dataset, grader_results, label_path="label")

# TPR = 1 - FNR, TNR = 1 - FPR
tpr = 1 - fnr.false_negative_rate
tnr = 1 - fpr.false_positive_rate
print(f"TPR={tpr:.2f}, TNR={tnr:.2f}, F1={f1.f1_score:.2f}")

# Per-stratum breakdown if difficulty data exists
for stratum in ["easy", "boundary", "hard"]:
    stratum_data = [d for d in analysis_dataset
                    if d.get("metadata", {}).get("difficulty") == stratum]
    if len(stratum_data) >= 10:
        # Compute TPR/TNR per stratum
        ...

Why per-stratum matters: A judge with TPR=0.9 overall but TPR=0.5 on boundary cases is unreliable exactly where judgment matters most. This is the "progress illusion" (EMNLP 2025) — aggregate metrics hide stratum-level failure.

Bootstrap 95% CI

Use bootstrap resampling to quantify uncertainty:

import numpy as np

def bootstrap_ci(samples, metric_fn, n_iter=1000, ci=95):
    """Compute bootstrap confidence interval for a metric."""
    n = len(samples)
    values = []
    for _ in range(n_iter):
        idx = np.random.choice(n, n, replace=True)
        resampled = [samples[i] for i in idx]
        values.append(metric_fn(resampled))
    lower = np.percentile(values, (100 - ci) / 2)
    upper = np.percentile(values, 100 - (100 - ci) / 2)
    return np.mean(values), lower, upper

tpr_mean, tpr_low, tpr_high = bootstrap_ci(
    paired, lambda s: sum(1 for p in s if p["judge"] == "fail" and p["human"] == "fail")
                      / max(1, sum(1 for p in s if p["human"] == "fail"))
)

Step 3: Calculate Agreement

Cohen's Kappa (chance-corrected agreement)

kappa = (p_o - p_e) / (1 - p_e)

• p_o: observed agreement rate
• p_e: expected agreement by chance

• = 0.8: substantial — judge is consistent with humans

• 0.6-0.8: moderate — conditional trust, needs spot-checking
• < 0.6: weak — cannot replace human judgment yet

Gwet's AC1 (robust to class imbalance)

When 90% of samples are "pass," kappa can be paradoxically low even with high agreement. Gwet's AC1 corrects for this. If kappa and AC1 differ by > 0.15, report both and note the class imbalance effect.

Systematic Bias

bias = P(judge=fail | human=pass) - P(judge=pass | human=fail)

• bias > 0.1: judge is stricter than humans (over-flagging)
• bias < -0.1: judge is more lenient than humans (under-flagging)
• |bias| < 0.1: no significant directional bias

Step 4: Five Bias Detection Checks

Step 5: Disagreement Pattern Analysis

For samples where judge and human disagree, cluster them to find root causes:

1. Extract disagreement samples — where judge verdict != human label
2. Classify each disagreement:
   • judge_prompt_ambiguous: pass/fail definitions not clear for this case
   • human_inconsistent: multiple human annotators disagreed on this sample
   • task_inherently_subjective: the dimension is fundamentally subjective
   • label_error: human label appears wrong, judge's reasoning is more convincing
   • judge_too_strict: judge applies criteria more harshly than humans intend
   • judge_too_lenient: judge overlooks issues humans catch

Present the top 3 patterns with 3 exemplars each so the user can decide whether to refine the judge prompt or accept the disagreement as inherent noise.

Step 6: Human-Reduction Roadmap

Step 7: Confirmation and Output

Present the alignment dashboard:

Alignment Results for [grader_name]:

TPR: 0.91  TNR: 0.88  F1: 0.90
Kappa: 0.87  AC1: 0.89  Bias: +0.03 (none)
95% CI (accuracy): [0.84, 0.93]

Per-stratum:
  easy:      TPR=0.96  TNR=0.94
  boundary:  TPR=0.82  TNR=0.79  ← weakest, monitor
  hard:      TPR=0.85  TNR=0.83

Bias checks:
  ✓ position:   no bias detected
  ✓ verbosity:  r=0.12 (clean)
  ✓ self-enh:   judge model != target model
  ✓ progress:   boundary gap 0.09 (acceptable)
  ✓ label drift: KL=0.08 (stable)

Phase: 3 (Auto-gate) — judge is calibrated and aligned

Disagreement patterns:
  - 12 samples: judge slightly stricter on multi-step queries
    Root cause: judge_prompt_ambiguous
    Recommendation: add a multi-step borderline example to few-shot

Recommendation: [calibrated + aligned | needs refinement | not ready]

Common Mistakes

• Using raw accuracy instead of TPR/TNR. A judge that calls everything "pass" gets 90% accuracy when 90% of samples pass, but catches zero failures. TPR and TNR decompose accuracy into what actually matters.
• Trusting kappa without checking class balance. With 95% pass rate, kappa can be 0.4 even with 95% raw agreement. Always report Gwet's AC1 alongside kappa.
• Skipping per-stratum analysis. Aggregate TPR of 0.9 with boundary TPR of 0.5 means the judge is unreliable exactly where you need it most.
• Not setting a stop condition for iteration. Refining the judge prompt has diminishing returns. After 3 iterations with no kappa improvement > 0.03, stop and collect more labeled data instead.
• Forgetting judge model != target model constraint. Self-evaluation inflates TPR by 3-8%. Always verify these are different models.

Next Skills

After 03-align-human:

• 04-eval-report: Generate a comprehensive report with maturity assessment.
• 02-metric-design: If you need to redesign graders based on bias findings.
• 01-eval-design: If disagreement patterns reveal dataset coverage gaps.