Litmus

Litmus is a hiring assessment platform that helps companies evaluate engineering candidates through realistic, job-relevant work. Backed by Y Combinator, it generates asynchronous coding assessments from a company’s codebase, tickets, and job descriptions, creating scoped tasks that reflect how candidates might contribute to the team. Companies can also bring existing coding problems for Litmus to host and grade, or create assessments from public inputs when private materials cannot be shared.

Candidates work in their usual development environment and can use AI tools. Litmus tracks activity such as file changes, commit history, and AI prompts, then asks candidates to explain their decisions in a recorded walkthrough. Each submission is tested in a live sandbox with a deterministic correctness harness, while configurable AI graders assess qualitative areas such as architecture and problem-solving process. Results are compiled into shareable reports with evidence linked to specific files and lines.

Litmus can fit into early or later interview stages, integrate candidate workflows with Ashby, Greenhouse, and Lever, or manage the process end to end.