Researchstack Method Synthesis

Method Synthesis

Read ../references/novelty-boundary.md, ../references/conference-story-patterns.md, and ../references/evidence-contracts.md.

Keep the user's topic fixed unless the user explicitly asks for new topics.

Required Flow

1. State the exact problem, semantic unit, performance target, deployment lifecycle, and resource constraints.
2. Audit established mechanisms in papers, official documentation, mature open-source systems, and production implementations.
3. Build an established-mechanism table: reusable, adaptable, and incompatible mechanisms, with evidence for each judgment.
4. Identify the unresolved bottleneck or failure mode after strong established mechanisms are considered.
5. Build a method design space across information, action granularity, objective, coordination boundary, time/state model, layer interface, failure model, and resource cost.
6. Generate several candidate mechanisms on the same topic. Use different design-space moves rather than cosmetic variants.
7. Stress-test each candidate against the closest method competitor and a strong engineered baseline.
8. Keep only candidates with a plausible mechanism chain and a discriminating experiment.

Useful method-generation moves include:

• expose a signal hidden by the current layer boundary,
• change the decision or scheduling granularity,
• replace a proxy objective that misranks real decisions,
• move from static to stateful or feedback-driven control,
• coordinate components that fail under independent local decisions,
• exploit a new hardware/runtime/compiler/network contract,
• adapt an established mechanism to constraints it cannot satisfy unchanged,
• turn a measured failure mode into a minimal new mechanism.

Combining techniques is not enough. A combination must create a causal interaction, capability, or tradeoff that neither component provides alone.

Candidate Collapse Tests

Reject or revise a candidate when:

• one extra heuristic, state variable, or tuning pass in the baseline erases it,
• the difference is only code volume, framework choice, or packaging,
• required dynamic work is moved outside the end-to-end measured lifecycle,
• it changes terminology but not information, decisions, or outcomes,
• the claimed mechanism has no prediction that differs from a rival explanation,
• deployment cost or semantic change invalidates the comparison.

Output

Use assets/design-space-matrix.md and assets/method-candidate-card.md.

Return:

1. fixed topic and constraints,
2. established-mechanism audit,
3. method design-space matrix,
4. two to four surviving method cards,
5. rejected candidates and collapse reasons,
6. the first minimal experiment for each survivor,
7. a recommendation about which candidate to test first and why.

Do not automatically select a winner from an opaque score. Explain the tradeoff, uncertainty, and evidence needed. If no method survives, report which capability or new evidence would reopen the topic before suggesting a topic change.