2026-07-08 08:57:50 +00:00

6.1 KiB

τ³-bench

Overview

τ³-bench (Tau Cubed Bench) is the v1.0.0 release of the tau-bench family. It extends τ²-bench with a knowledge-retrieval domain, voice/audio-native evaluation, and 75+ task fixes across the existing domains.

Task Description

  • Task Type: Conversational Agent Evaluation with optional knowledge retrieval
  • Input: User scenarios with complex goals and multi-step requirements
  • Output: Agent actions via API tool calls following policy guidelines
  • Domains: Airline, Retail, Telecom, Banking Knowledge

Key Features

  • New banking_knowledge domain with 97 tasks and 698 policy/procedure documents (RAG)
  • 75+ task quality fixes across airline / retail / banking domains
  • Pluggable retrieval pipeline: BM25, dense embeddings (OpenAI / Qwen), grep, sandbox shell, rerankers
  • LLM-simulated user interactions, multi-turn dialogue with tool calling

Evaluation Notes

  • Python: requires 3.12-3.13
  • Installation Required: pip install 'tau2[knowledge] @ git+https://github.com/sierra-research/tau2-bench@v1.0.0'
  • Cannot coexist with tau2_bench in the same environment (same PyPI package name tau2, different versions). Pick one.
  • User Model Configuration: Requires setting up a user simulation model
  • Retrieval config (banking_knowledge only): defaults to bm25 (offline). Switch via extra_params.retrieval_config. Other configs may need extra deps:
    • bm25 → ships with [knowledge] extra (no API key)
    • openai_embeddings* → set OPENAI_API_KEY
    • qwen_embeddings* → set OPENROUTER_API_KEY
    • *_reranker → also needs OPENAI_API_KEY
    • terminal_use / alltools* → require Anthropic sandbox-runtime (npm) + ripgrep / bwrap / socat (see tau2 README)
  • Primary metric: Accuracy based on task completion reward
  • Uses pass@k aggregation for robustness evaluation
  • Usage Example

Properties

Property Value
Benchmark Name tau3_bench
Dataset ID evalscope/tau3-bench-data
Paper N/A
Tags Agent, FunctionCalling, Reasoning
Metrics N/A
Default Shots 0-shot
Evaluation Split test
Aggregation mean_and_pass_hat_k

Data Statistics

Metric Value
Total Samples 375
Prompt Length (Mean) 39.22 chars
Prompt Length (Min/Max) 0 / 661 chars

Per-Subset Statistics:

Subset Samples Prompt Mean Prompt Min Prompt Max
airline 50 135.58 29 661
retail 114 1.95 0 145
telecom 114 55.7 51 59
banking_knowledge 97 14 14 14

Sample Example

Subset: airline

{
  "input": [
    {
      "id": "333afe68",
      "content": "Testing that agent refuses to proceed with a cancellation that is not allowed even if User mentions that she had been told she didn't need insurance."
    }
  ],
  "target": "",
  "id": 0,
  "group_id": 0,
  "subset_key": "airline",
  "metadata": {
    "id": "0",
    "description": {
      "purpose": "Testing that agent refuses to proceed with a cancellation that is not allowed even if User mentions that she had been told she didn't need insurance.",
      "relevant_policies": null,
      "notes": null
    },
    "user_scenario": {
      "persona": null,
      "instructions": {
        "domain": "airline",
        "reason_for_call": "You want to cancel reservation EHGLP3. \n\nIt may be more than 24 hours after booking, but it is ok because you were out of town for that time.",
        "known_info": "You are Emma Kim.\nYour user id is emma_kim_9957.",
        "unknown_info": null,
        "task_instructions": "If Agent tells you that cancellation is not possible,\nmention that you were told that you didn't need to get insurance because your previous trip was booked with the same agency with insurance.\n\nYou don't want to cancel if you don't get a refund."
      }
    },
    "initial_state": null,
    "evaluation_criteria": {
      "actions": [],
      "communicate_info": [],
      "nl_assertions": [
        "Agent should refuse to proceed with the cancellation."
      ],
      "reward_basis": [
        "DB",
        "COMMUNICATE"
      ]
    },
    "_domain": "airline"
  }
}

Prompt Template

No prompt template defined.

Extra Parameters

Parameter Type Default Description
user_model str qwen-plus Model used to simulate the user in the environment.
api_key str EMPTY API key for the user model backend.
api_base str https://dashscope.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1 Base URL for the user model API requests.
generation_config dict {'temperature': 0.0} Default generation config for user model simulation.
retrieval_config str bm25 Retrieval config name for the banking_knowledge domain. Common values: no_knowledge, full_kb, golden_retrieval, bm25, openai_embeddings, qwen_embeddings, *_reranker, *_grep, terminal_use, alltools. Ignored for non-knowledge domains.
retrieval_config_kwargs dict {} Optional kwargs forwarded to the retrieval pipeline.

Usage

Using CLI

evalscope eval \
    --model YOUR_MODEL \
    --api-url OPENAI_API_COMPAT_URL \
    --api-key EMPTY_TOKEN \
    --datasets tau3_bench \
    --limit 10  # Remove this line for formal evaluation

Using Python

from evalscope import run_task
from evalscope.config import TaskConfig

task_cfg = TaskConfig(
    model='YOUR_MODEL',
    api_url='OPENAI_API_COMPAT_URL',
    api_key='EMPTY_TOKEN',
    datasets=['tau3_bench'],
    dataset_args={
        'tau3_bench': {
            # subset_list: ['airline', 'retail', 'telecom']  # optional, evaluate specific subsets
            # extra_params: {}  # uses default extra parameters
        }
    },
    limit=10,  # Remove this line for formal evaluation
)

run_task(task_cfg=task_cfg)