experiment

name

experiment

description

Use to run an autoresearch-style experiment loop — improve a measurable artifact by trying changes, measuring against one objective metric, keeping if better and reverting if not, on an isolated git branch with a logged trail. Trigger on "/experiment", "run an experiment loop", "autoresearch X", "tune/optimize X against a metric", "hill-climb X". Follows references/sops/experiment-loop.md. Enforces the autonomy gate (objective metric + reversible sandbox + no PHI/external) before any unsupervised looping.

Experiment loop (autoresearch)

Hill-climb a measurable artifact: try → measure → keep-or-revert → log, on a branch, with a trail. Full procedure: references/sops/experiment-loop.md. Existing examples + use-case cards: experiments/.

First, the autonomy gate

Before looping unsupervised, confirm all three:

1. Objective, cheap, automatable metric (code computes it in seconds–minutes).
2. Reversible sandbox (git branch / throwaway data / .tmp).
3. No PHI, no confidential data, no external send, no prod deploy.

If any fails → human-in-the-loop: propose each change, get approval, no overnight run. Regulated/production outcomes feed the human-reviewed change process — never auto-deploy. This is CLAUDE.md's scale-caution-to-stakes rule.

Run it

1. Pick or write the experiment's CARD.md (objective, metric+direction, the one mutable surface, budget, autonomy, owner). New ones can copy experiments/forecast-tuning/.
2. git checkout -b experiments/<tag>.
3. Baseline run → tools/experiment_log.py add <results.tsv> --id ... --metric ... --status keep --note baseline.
4. Loop: edit the one mutable surface → run the read-only harness → log → keep (commit) if improved, else git reset. Simpler-and-equal = keep.
5. Stop on interrupt or the budget. Hand the winner + trail to the human.

Guardrails

• The eval harness is read-only ground truth — never edit it to game the metric.
• One mutable surface only (reviewable diffs).
• Run artifacts (results.tsv, run.log, data/) are git-ignored; the harness + surface + CARD are the tracked blueprint.
• Don't ship regulated/production changes from the loop.