| name | study-file-organization |
| description | Directory structure, naming conventions, and git workflow for organizing studies. |
Study File Organization & Rules
Complete reference for how to organize files, directories, and git workflow when running studies.
Directory Layout
All work lives in sessions/. Inside sessions, files are organized by topic (a general area of study). Each topic gets a directory with a descriptive alias derived from the user's request.
Example: "I want to study status quo bias among older people" → topic_status-quo-bias-age
If the directory already has topic folders, make sure your topic name is unique.
Within each topic, create one or more studies — self-contained collections of files that do something (create an agent list, run a simulation, etc.). Studies are named with snake-case post-fix indices: _a, _b, etc.
sessions/
topic_<alias>/
README.md
.git
study_a/
study_b/
study_c/
Creating a Study
Use the create_study_project.py tool to scaffold the structure:
python create_study_project.py sessions/topic_<alias>/<study_name>
This produces:
.git
README.md
requirements.txt
Makefile
refs/
DOCKERFILE
data/
raw/
.gitkeep
cooked/
.gitkeep
uploaded/
.gitkeep
edsl_jobs/
job_a/
study_agent_list.py
study_scenario_list.py
study_model_list.py
run_job.py
job_b/
…
analysis/
computed_objects/
writeup/
planning.md
report.md
report.css
appendix.md
tables/
plots/
numbers/
Report Formatting
CSS: Copy the Expected Parrot branded stylesheet into every study's writeup directory:
/Users/johnhorton/tools/ep/macaw/ep-agent/report.css <study_root>/writeup/report.css