For teams hiring engineers who build with AI

Stop interviewing for a job AI already changed.

DeftBench is an AI-native coding assessment: candidates direct a real AI agent through an ambiguous, real-world problem — not a reversed linked list — inside a live browser IDE. You get an evidence-linked evaluation of how they actually worked, in minutes.

Run your first assessment free See a sample report

workspace provisioning: <60s
session-to-report: <10min
evidence-linked scores: 100%

1# candidate #4471 — 00:14:02
2> Add rate limiting to the /checkout endpoint.
3  Use a sliding window, not fixed buckets — we
4  get bursty traffic from retries.
5 
6# agent proposed a fixed-bucket limiter first

session #4471 · replayableflagged for review

Real browser IDE with an AI agent, wired in
Signup to first assessment in under 15 minutes
SOC2-track · SSO, audit logs, BYOK

00the problem

Your interview process is testing for a version of the job that's already gone.

01unmeasured
Candidates are told “no AI,” then use it anyway — off camera, unmeasured, ungraded.
02shallow
The ones who are allowed to use AI get a chat sidebar bolted onto a LeetCode clone. You get a pass/fail. You get nothing about how they got there.
03misaligned
Meanwhile the actual job is: direct an agent, verify its output, catch what it gets wrong, know when to override it. None of that shows up in a whiteboard algorithm question.

You're left guessing. Six months later you find out whether the hire could actually work this way — after the offer, after the ramp, after the org chart already moved.

A hiring signal you can trust, not a vibe you have to defend in the debrief.

Imagine handing your hiring manager a report that says, with a timestamp and a replay link: this is exactly the moment the candidate caught the agent's bug, here's the prompt that fixed it, here's where they didn't verify and it bit them.

Evaluation report — candidate #4471Strong hire signal

Caught an unsafe default the agent introduced — verified with a test before merging.14:02
Redirected the agent after a vague first prompt produced the wrong abstraction.03:41
Shipped without running the test suite once — flagged for review.21:15

That's not a transcript dump. That's a decision.

01how it works

Five steps, one evidence trail.

01
Give candidates a real workspace, not a toy
A full browser-based IDE with an AI coding agent already wired in — the same class of tool they'll use on day one. No install, under 60 seconds to spin up.
02
Give them a real problem, not a puzzle
Ambiguous, open-ended engineering problems — the kind that reward judgment, research, and tool selection, not memorized algorithms.
03
Capture everything that matters
Every prompt, every tool call, every MCP invocation, every accepted or rejected suggestion — captured as structured telemetry, not a video you have to scrub through.
```
{
  "event": "suggestion_rejected",
  "tool": "edit_file",
  "reason_inferred": "missing_input_validation",
  "t": "00:14:02"
}
```
04
Get an evidence-linked evaluation, automatically
Every score traces back to a specific, replayable moment in the session. No black box. No “trust us.”
05
Decide faster, with confidence
A recruiter dashboard built for comparing candidates at a glance — not re-reading raw transcripts one at a time.

02why this, not that

The comparison that matters.

How DeftBench compares with traditional and bolt-on AI coding tests
Capability	Traditional coding tests	Bolt-on "AI-allowed" tests	DeftBench
Tests the actual job
Measures how AI was used
Evidence-linked scoring
Setup time	Hours	Hours	< 5 min
Report you can defend in a debrief

03proof

Not our word for it.

We stopped losing strong AI-fluent engineers to an interview process that was testing for the wrong skill.

Pilot design partner

Head of Engineering

The replay and evidence links turned every debrief from an argument into a two-minute read.

Pilot design partner

Technical Recruiter

workspace provisioning, p95: < 60s
session-to-report latency: < 10 min
recruiter-reported usefulness: 4.2+/5

Figures reflect pilot-cohort targets from the product spec, updated as real customer data comes in.

04who it's for

Built for every stage of hiring.

AI-native startups

Fast setup, no process overhead, hire for the tools you already use.

Scaleups

Standardized rubrics and dashboards so every interviewer's signal means the same thing.

Enterprises

SSO, audit logs, data residency, BYOK.

Recruiting agencies

Multi-tenant client workspaces, white-labeled reports.

05frequently asked

Questions, answered.

Give your next candidate a problem worth solving.

We're onboarding teams in small batches. Join the waitlist and we'll reach out when a slot opens up.

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