Proposal for new Evaluation repo

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docs/evaluation/eval-repo.md

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+# New Repository Proposal: eval
+
+## Summary
+
+This document proposes a new repository under the `instructlab` GitHub organization:
+
+- `instructlab/eval`
+
+## Background
+
+The `instructlab/instructlab` repository currently includes no real implementation
+of Evaluation as described by the [LAB paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.01081). The
+closest implementation currently in `instructlab/instructlab` via the `ilab test` command.
+
+`ilab test` as of this writing is only implemented for macOS with M-series chips. It uses
+a JSON Lines file and a LoRA adapter to compare output of a given model before and after
+LoRA training with MLX, thus the macOS M-series dependency.
+
+We desire to build out a library for methods that satisfy the evaluation described in the
+paper, using more high-level evaluation schemes such as
+[Multi-turn Benchmark](https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.05685) for skills and
+[Massive Multitask Language Understanding](https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.03300) (MMLU) for
+knowledge. We propose a new repository to house this code that publishes a new Python
+library called `instructlab-eval`. The reasoning for a new repository and library includes:
+
+- We expect multiple consumers of this code. The `ilab` CLI is one, but we also envision
+building a REST API around it to help support scaling out this functionality on a cluster.
+- We expect there is broader community interest in an open-source library and service for
+evaluation. We envision this library could support other evaluation techniques over time.
+- We also realize that much of model evaluation is generally useful outside the context of
+InstructLab. Other libraries may emerge in the broader ecosystem that handle parts of what
+we need, while this library will always remain to handle the InstructLab-specific details
+of how evaluation works in our workflow.
+
+## Maintainers
+
+The initial team of maintainers for this repository will be a copy of the
+`Backend Maintainers` GitHub team.
+
+## Alternatives Considered
+
+### Add to `instructlab/instructlab`
+
+We could add this code to the existing `instructlab/instructlab` repository.
+
+The primary argument against this approach is that we expect the scope of an
+`instructlab-eval` library to expand beyond the scope of what would be run by the
+`ilab` CLI. We instead envision a different community of contributors organizing
+around Evaluation specifically.