Shadow Testing (Agent)

Shadow testing runs a new agent version in parallel with the production version on real traffic, capturing its outputs without serving them to end users.

It enables direct comparison of new vs. old agent behaviour on production inputs before a live release, dramatically reducing the risk of deploying an agent that performs well on benchmarks but poorly in production.

Closely related concepts include Environment Promotion (Agent), Agent CI/CD, Agent-as-a-Service, Canary Deployment (Agent). Each is defined in the Prefactor glossary.