Build Your Own Benchmark: A 30-Question Test for the Work You Actually Do
Public leaderboards measure someone else's job. This step-by-step guide helps you build a small, honest test that tells you which model is good at yours.
Research Editor
Public leaderboards are useful the way restaurant reviews are useful. They tell you what's popular and roughly what's good, but they can't tell you whether you'll like the soup.
Your work is specific. A model that tops a reasoning leaderboard might still mangle your company's tone, misread your spreadsheets or refuse a perfectly ordinary request in your field. The only way to know is to test it on your own tasks, and a useful personal benchmark takes an afternoon, not a research lab.
Here's how to build one with thirty questions.
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How this was made AI-assisted
AI-assisted. Written by a person with AI help for research, outlining or editing.
Lena used a model to brainstorm edge-case examples for the task list; the rubric, the Fernhill case study and all recommendations are her own.
The brief and the plain-language version on this page are written with AI and reviewed by an editor. The story itself is the source of truth.
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