---
name: tai-theme-personalization
description: 'Use the Testing AI theme Personalization to plan, review, or teach related AI quality work. Applies concepts and techniques from the book to testing AI, AI-generated software, and non-deterministic systems when relevant.'
---

# Personalization

Skill name: `tai-theme-personalization`

Based on **Testing AI: Engineering Confidence in AI Systems** by **Jason Arbon**.

## Theme Purpose

Use these approaches when testing personalization economics, N = 1 quality, when not to personalize, user-owned memory, AI identity, portability, lock-in, and synthetic users.

Apply these concepts when testing AI, AI-generated software, model-backed features, agents, search, chatbots, RAG systems, generated code, dynamic interfaces, or other software whose behavior can vary across runs, users, data, tools, or time.

## How To Use This Theme

- Identify the behavior, capability, risk, or release decision being evaluated.
- Choose the relevant concepts below and turn them into concrete eval cases, samples, traces, checks, rubrics, metrics, or release gates.
- Prefer evidence that supports a decision: ship, canary, hold, rollback, or collect more samples.
- Report by slices and severe failures when averages hide risk.
- Preserve enough evidence that another person or agent can understand what was tested, how it was measured, and why the recommendation follows.

## Concepts And Techniques To Apply

- Test whether personalization creates value instead of merely creating variation.
- Use N = 1 evaluation carefully, with longitudinal evidence, user-specific baselines, and guardrails against overfitting.
- Know when not to personalize because risk, fairness, privacy, predictability, or user trust matters more.
- Test memory ownership, portability, lock-in, AI identity, synthetic users, and feedback loops.
- Report personalization quality by user slice, context, task, and time.

## Reporting Guidance

- State what was tested and what population the evidence represents.
- Explain uncertainty, missing coverage, severe failures, and known blind spots.
- Connect findings to a concrete decision or next action.
- Use topic-specific chapter skills only when deeper detail is needed; this theme skill should stand alone as practical guidance.