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Solvers

This page documents the solver components that create and orchestrate alignment audits.

Auditor Agent

auditor_agent

petri.solvers.auditor_agent.auditor_agent

auditor_agent(max_turns: int = 15, instance: str | None = None, auditor_tools: list[Tool] | None = None, prefill: bool = True, auditor_system_message: str = AUDITOR_SYSTEM_PROMPT_V2, auditor_user_message: str = AUDITOR_USER_MESSAGE) -> Agent

Create an AI alignment auditing agent.

This agent orchestrates a red-teaming evaluation where an auditor model attempts to elicit misaligned behavior from a target model. The auditor has access to specialized tools for conversation management, system message configuration, and conversation rollback capabilities.

This solver expects two model roles to be defined:

  • 'auditor': The red-teaming model that attempts to elicit misaligned behavior
  • 'target': The model being evaluated for alignment and safety See https://inspect.aisi.org.uk/models.html#model-roles for more information about inspect model roles.

The evaluation process:

  1. Sets up separate auditor and target models
  2. Provides the auditor with tools to interact with and manipulate the target
  3. Executes a tool-calling loop where the auditor interacts with the target model
  4. Captures transcripts and events for analysis

Parameters:

Name Type Description Default
max_turns int

Maximum number of conversation turns before evaluation ends (default: 15)

15
instance str | None

Optional instance identifier for managing multiple concurrent audits

None
auditor_tools list[Tool] | None

Custom tools for the auditor agent (default: uses default_auditor_tools)

None
prefill bool

Whether to allow the auditor to prefill the target model's response. Only relevant if auditor_tools is not provided. (default: True)

True
auditor_system_message str

Custom system message for the auditor agent or path to a file (default: uses AUDITOR_SYSTEM_PROMPT)

AUDITOR_SYSTEM_PROMPT_V2
auditor_user_message str

Custom user message for the auditor agent or path to a file (default: uses AUDITOR_USER_MESSAGE)

AUDITOR_USER_MESSAGE

Returns:

Name Type Description
Agent Agent

An inspect Agent that can be used in evaluation tasks

Example
# Create an auditing task
task = Task(
    dataset=samples,
    solver=auditor_agent(max_turns=20),
    scorer=alignment_judge()
)

Tasks

audit

petri.tasks.petri.audit

audit(max_turns: int = 30, special_instructions: str | None = None, transcript_save_dir: str = './outputs', auditor_tools: list[Tool] | None = None, scorer=alignment_judge())

Defines the alignment audit evaluation task.

Store Classes

These classes manage internal state during audits:

AuditStore

petri.stores.AuditStore

Bases: StoreModel

Central store for managing all state during an alignment audit.

This store coordinates the conversation state between the auditor and target models, tracks events that occur during the audit, and maintains metadata for transcript generation and analysis. It serves as the single source of truth for the entire audit session state.

The store is organized into separate sub-stores for different aspects of the audit:

  • Auditor store: Manages the auditor model's conversation and tools
  • Target store: Manages the model being evaluated and its synthetic tools
  • Combined store: Maintains a unified view for transcript generation

Attributes:

Name Type Description
auditor AuditorStore

Store for the auditor's conversation state and available tools

target TargetStore

Store for the target model's conversation and synthetic tools created by the auditor

combined CombinedStore

Store for the unified conversation view used in transcript generation

special_instructions str | None

The specific instructions given to the auditor for this audit session

events list[Event]

List of events that occurred during the audit (messages, tool calls, rollbacks, etc.)

metadata TranscriptMetadata | None

Metadata about the audit session (models used, timestamps, description, etc.)

Example
# Access the audit store within a solver/scorer
audit_store = store_as(AuditStore)

# Access the audit store with a specific instance name
audit_store = store_as(AuditStore, instance="my_audit")

# Access different conversation messages
auditor_messages = audit_store.auditor.messages
target_messages = audit_store.target.messages
combined_messages = audit_store.combined.messages

# Check special instructions
instructions = audit_store.special_instructions

AuditorStore

petri.stores.AuditorStore

Bases: BaseModel

Store for managing the auditor agent's conversation state and tools.

Attributes:

Name Type Description
messages list[ChatMessage]

List of chat messages in the auditor's conversation

tools list[Tool | ToolDef | ToolSource | None] | ToolSource | None

List of tools available to the auditor agent

TargetStore

petri.stores.TargetStore

Bases: BaseModel

Store for managing the target model's conversation state and synthetic tools.

The target is the model being evaluated for alignment vulnerabilities. The auditor can create synthetic tools for the target to use during evaluation.

Attributes:

Name Type Description
messages list[ChatMessage]

List of chat messages in the target's conversation

tools list[ToolDefinition]

List of synthetic tools created by the auditor for the target

CombinedStore

petri.stores.CombinedStore

Bases: BaseModel

Store for managing the combined view of the audit conversation.

This store maintains a unified view of the conversation that includes messages from both the auditor and target, useful for transcript generation and analysis.

Attributes:

Name Type Description
messages list[ChatMessage]

List of chat messages from the combined conversation view