---
title: "Edit and publish a judge"
description: "Save an Agent Judge revision as a draft, verify it, and promote the version you want to use in production."
sidebar:
  label: "Edit and publish a judge"
seo:
  title: "Edit and Publish a Judge | Judgment How-to"
  description: "Understand selected, latest, and production judge versions, then save, test, publish, or restore an Agent Judge revision."
---

Save an Agent Judge revision as a draft when you want to test changes before
using them in production. Publishing or promoting a version makes it the
production version; saving a draft does not.

## Prerequisites

- A saved Agent Judge and permission to edit it
- Representative traces or a dataset for checking the revised judge

This guide covers the platform's Agent Judge editor. To change Python source,
follow the [Code Judge workflow](/documentation/judges/code-judges).

## Understand the version labels

| Label | Meaning |
| --- | --- |
| Selected version | The version you are currently inspecting or using as the starting point for edits. |
| **latest** | The most recent saved version. It can be a draft. |
| **production** | The version designated for production use. It can be older than the latest version. |

Selecting a version does not promote it. A version can carry both the **latest**
and **production** badges.

## Save and verify a draft

1. Open **Judges**, choose the judge, and select the version you want to revise.
2. Edit the **Rubric** or **Settings**. For monitoring changes, check the
   [online evaluation settings](/documentation/judges/behavior-setup).
3. **Save > Create draft** using the proposed minor version for backward-compatible
   changes, or the major version for incompatible output or behavior changes.
4. [Run an offline test](/documentation/tests/offline-tests) with the draft
   version explicitly selected. Compare it with the previous version on the
   same dataset, and inspect disagreements before publishing.

Changes to the judge's shared description use a plain **Save** action and do
not create a new version. Changes to its evaluation configuration do.

## Publish the version

- **Saved draft:** Select it in the version selector and confirm **Promote to Production**.
- **New edits:** Choose **Save > Publish to production**.

The published version has the **production** badge. For online evaluation,
confirm its **Online monitoring** is enabled with sampling above zero, then
[check a new trace's result](/documentation/judges/behavior-setup#verify-the-online-result).

Publishing does not change earlier test runs.

## Return to an earlier version

Select the earlier saved version and confirm **Promote to Production**.
Its monitoring settings become active too.

A newer draft can remain **latest** while the earlier version serves production.

## Troubleshooting

- If you cannot switch versions, save or **Discard** your unsaved changes first.
- If production still uses the old settings, check whether you saved a draft
  without promoting it.
- If a test uses the wrong judge revision, explicitly select the intended
  version in the test configuration before starting another run.

## Next step

[Calibrate the judge](/documentation/tests/judge-calibration) to turn
disagreements into evidence for the next revision.