preregister

name	preregister
description	Lock a confirmatory falsification target and its fixed multiple-comparison family before observing the confirmatory result. Use before promoting an exploratory finding to a main claim or whenever several related hypotheses need Bonferroni control. Records metric, threshold, family id/size, correction, and seed budget.

Preregister

This skill supports "decide before observing" for confirmatory claims. Exploratory runs may still use seed_perturb / pin_metric, but any number intended as a main publication claim should have a matching prereg row first.

When to invoke

• Before a result is promoted from exploratory to a confirmatory manuscript claim.
• Right after bt-tournament returns the top-2 hypotheses when the next run is explicitly confirmatory.
• Whenever the user types /preregister.

Required arguments

arg	meaning	example
hypothesis_id	id from mem_nodes (kind=hypothesis)	hyp_a3f9...
metric_name	exact claim text the engineer will pin later	"test accuracy"
direction	higher_better or lower_better	higher_better
threshold	number that separates met from missed	0.85
seed_count	how many seeds the seed_perturb call must use	5
alpha	nominal Type-I error rate	0.05
mc_correction	bonferroni (default), none, or legacy alias bh	bonferroni
family_id	stable id shared by related confirmatory tests	primary_metrics
family_size	total number of tests planned in that family	4
heldout_dataset	optional dataset name to be queried via query_heldout	mnist-test

Workflow

1. Call mcp__verify__list_preregistrations(hypothesis_id=...). If a row exists with status open, do not fail the session. Ask whether to reuse that lock, withdraw it outside this tool, or create a separate confirmatory prereg for a genuinely different metric.
2. Before the first family member is resolved, define the full family. Use one family_id and the same locked family_size, alpha, and correction for all related tests. A standalone test gets an automatically generated family of 1.
3. Call mcp__verify__preregister(...) with the exact metric text, threshold, family_id, and family_size.
4. Surface the resulting prereg_id and family metadata before implementation.
5. Pass prereg_id along the workflow so the confirmatory run stays linked.

Resolution

The engineer or verifier later calls mcp__verify__resolve_preregistration(prereg_id, observed_value, observed_p_value). The verdict is frozen at that point and:

• Bonferroni correction uses the fixed family_size saved at lock time. Resolving earlier rows never relaxes alpha for later rows. The old bh value remains a compatibility alias and resolves with the same fixed-family Bonferroni calculation.
• prereg_resolved events fire into the cockpit.
• The reviewer agent later treats confirmatory manuscript claims with status != met as blockers. Exploratory claims must be labelled as exploratory in the manuscript.

Guardrails

• Never edit a prereg after lock. There is no update_preregistration. If the locking was wrong, file a new prereg and add a note in the manuscript explaining that the earlier run was exploratory or superseded.
• withdrawn is reserved for cases the user actively cancels a hypothesis; the verifier never withdraws on its own.
• Do not invoke this skill in parallel with a confirmatory seed_perturb. Exploratory seed_perturb runs may exist before the lock, but must stay labelled exploratory.