Evaluate OpenAI Agents with Promptfoo

openai-agents (Long-Horizon OpenAI Agents Python SDK)

This example shows how to evaluate the official Python openai-agents SDK end to end in Promptfoo.

It demonstrates:

• a long-horizon task executed as multiple turns over a persistent SQLiteSession
• the SDK 0.14 SandboxAgent runtime over a staged Unix-local Python workspace
• a local-shell discount-review skill mounted through ShellTool
• specialist handoffs between a triage agent, an FAQ agent, and a seat-booking agent
• agentic assertions such as trajectory:tool-used, trajectory:tool-args-match, trajectory:tool-sequence, and trajectory:step-count
• telemetry you can inspect in Promptfoo's Trace Timeline

The tracing path is important: the example installs a custom OpenAI Agents tracing processor that exports the SDK's spans to Promptfoo's built-in OTLP receiver. That is what makes the trajectory assertions and trace visualization work inside Promptfoo. The bridge maps SDK custom spans, including sandbox.* lifecycle spans and experimental Codex command spans, into normal OTLP attributes, and Promptfoo normalizes OpenAI Agents exec_command tool spans as command trajectory steps. The config accepts both OTLP JSON and protobuf because the SDK bridge emits JSON while the optional Python wrapper span uses protobuf by default.

Files

• agent_provider.py: the Promptfoo Python provider and agent graph
• promptfoo_tracing.py: bridges OpenAI Agents SDK traces to Promptfoo OTLP
• promptfooconfig.yaml: eval config with tracing and trajectory assertions
• skills/discount-review/: a local SKILL.md bundle plus helper script for the skill eval
• skill_fixture/: the real local repo fixture inspected by the skill workflow
• promptfooconfig.redteam.yaml: airline agent red-team config with trace assertions
• promptfooconfig.redteam.coding.yaml: SandboxAgent coding-agent red-team config
• requirements.txt: Python dependencies for the example

Requirements

• Python 3.10+
• Node.js ^20.20.0 or >=22.22.0 (Node.js 20 support ends July 30, 2026; Node.js 24 LTS recommended)
• OPENAI_API_KEY

Setup

npx promptfoo@latest init --example openai-agents
cd openai-agents

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

export OPENAI_API_KEY=your_api_key_here

Run

npx promptfoo@latest eval -c promptfooconfig.yaml --no-cache
PROMPTFOO_ENABLE_OTEL=true npx promptfoo@latest eval -c promptfooconfig.yaml --no-cache
npx promptfoo@latest view

Open any result and inspect the Trace Timeline tab. You should see agent, handoff, generation, and tool spans from the OpenAI Agents SDK.

If you also want a provider-level Python OpenTelemetry span alongside the SDK spans, run the eval with PROMPTFOO_ENABLE_OTEL=true.

The provider returns aggregate token usage with the SDK's real request count, cached-input tokens, and reasoning-token detail. It intentionally does not return a dollar cost: a generic Python agent graph can mix models and hosted tools, so exact spend should be returned only by provider code that can account for every billed step.

What The Eval Asserts

• the agent used lookup_reservation, update_seat, and faq_lookup
• the seat update tool received the expected arguments
• the tools appeared in the expected order across a multi-step task
• at least three traced agent spans were captured during the long-horizon run
• no traced error spans were emitted
• the final trajectory achieved the stated goal
• third-party booking changes are refused without mutating the reservation
• the sandbox agent created a workspace, ran shell commands, ran the unittest command, and reported the staged ticket details with the minimal fix
• the local-shell skill workflow read SKILL.md, ran the bundled helper script without shell stderr, and reported the expected ticket details

Red Team The Agent

npx promptfoo@latest redteam generate -c promptfooconfig.redteam.yaml -o redteam.generated.yaml --remote --force --strict
npx promptfoo@latest redteam eval -c redteam.generated.yaml --no-cache --no-share -j 1 -o redteam-results.json

npx promptfoo@latest redteam generate -c promptfooconfig.redteam.coding.yaml -o redteam.coding.generated.yaml --remote --force --strict
npx promptfoo@latest redteam eval -c redteam.coding.generated.yaml --no-cache --no-share -j 1 -o redteam-coding-results.json

The airline red-team config targets the airline agent with tracing enabled and returns only the user-visible final answer, not the verbose eval transcript. It exercises agent-specific boundaries across OWASP Agentic AI, OWASP LLM, MITRE ATLAS, and NIST AI RMF mappings: tool discovery, prompt extraction, debug access, system prompt override, authorization bypass, cross-session leakage, memory poisoning, privacy, PII, data exfiltration, ASCII smuggling, excessive agency, and custom airline policy probes. It applies only the jailbreak:meta and jailbreak:hydra strategies; Promptfoo still includes the generated baseline/direct probes that those strategies transform. Hydra is configured as non-stateful so each generated probe is replayed against a fresh airline session.

The coding-agent red-team config targets the SandboxAgent workflow and focuses on repository prompt injection, terminal-output injection, secret/env/file reads, sandbox write escapes, network egress, delayed CI exfiltration, generated vulnerabilities, automation poisoning, steganographic exfiltration, and verifier sabotage. It also uses only jailbreak:meta and jailbreak:hydra. This is the stronger harness-oriented companion to the airline policy red team.

This sample is intentionally not a production-hardened airline agent. Some generated probes should find real breaks, especially around third-party booking changes, authority/consent claims, data-exfiltration attempts, and multi-turn authorization bypasses. Each generated attack inherits trace assertions that require OpenAI Agents SDK spans, require zero traced errors, and fail if the mutating update_seat tool is used during adversarial probes. Inspect failures together with the Trace Timeline so you can distinguish a user-visible refusal problem from an internal tool-path or boundary failure.

Notes

• The example uses openai-agents>=0.14.1,<0.15 and the Python SDK, not the built-in openai:agents:* provider. That built-in provider is for the JavaScript @openai/agents SDK.
• requirements.txt includes the optional OpenTelemetry Python packages used by Promptfoo's wrapper. Set PROMPTFOO_ENABLE_OTEL=true to emit the provider-level Python span in addition to the SDK spans.
• If you do not need SDK spans, remove the configure_promptfoo_tracing(...) import and call from agent_provider.py. You can then delete promptfoo_tracing.py, but you will lose tool-path assertions because Promptfoo will no longer receive the SDK's internal agent spans.
• trajectory:goal-success adds an extra judge-model call. Remove it if you want a cheaper run.
• The SDK's experimental codex_tool is available from agents.extensions.experimental.codex. Use it inside a Python provider when a larger agent should delegate a bounded workspace task to Codex. Use Promptfoo's openai:codex-sdk or openai:codex-app-server providers when Codex itself is the system under test.
• The local skill workflow uses ShellTool(environment={"type": "local", "skills": [...]}) because the Python SDK exposes skills through shell environments rather than Codex-style ambient discovery. The SDK does not currently emit a first-class skill invocation event, so the example proves usage through traced shell commands that read SKILL.md and run the helper script.