Exp Lens Severity Testing

Severity Testing Experimental Design Lens

Philosophical Mode: Falsificationist Primary Question: "Would this design have caught the error?" Focus: Adversarial Cases, Negative Controls, Falsification Tests, Easy-Pass Detection, Confirmatory Theater

Arguments

/autoskillit:exp-lens-severity-testing [context_path] [experiment_plan_path]

• context_path (optional positional arg 1) — Absolute path to a lens context file containing IV/DV tables, H0/H1 hypotheses, controlled variables, and success criteria. If provided, read this file before beginning analysis to obtain structured context. If omitted, discover context by exploring the CWD.
• experiment_plan_path (optional positional arg 2) — Absolute path to the full experiment plan. If provided, read for complete experimental methodology and design. If omitted, locate the experiment plan by exploring the CWD.

When to Use

• Evaluating whether positive results are meaningful or trivially achievable
• Checking for adversarial robustness of experimental conclusions
• User invokes /autoskillit:exp-lens-severity-testing or /autoskillit:make-experiment-diag severity

Critical Constraints

NEVER:

• Modify any source code files
• Accept a "pass" result without asking what a false result would have looked like under this design
• Create files outside {{AUTOSKILLIT_TEMP}}/exp-lens-severity-testing/
• Run subagents in the background (run_in_background: true is prohibited)

ALWAYS:

• For every positive claim, identify what error the test was capable of detecting

• Inventory negative controls and sanity checks explicitly — their absence is a finding

• Rate severity before reporting conclusions, not after

• Flag confirmatory theater: experiments designed to confirm rather than risk refutation

• BEFORE creating any diagram, LOAD the /autoskillit:mermaid skill using the Skill tool - this is MANDATORY

• If the Skill tool cannot be used (disable-model-invocation) or refuses this invocation, do NOT proceed with diagram creation. Abort this step and omit the diagram from output.

• Write output to {{AUTOSKILLIT_TEMP}}/exp-lens-severity-testing/exp_diag_severity_testing_{YYYY-MM-DD_HHMMSS}.md

• After writing the file, emit the structured output token as literal plain text with no markdown formatting on the token name (the adjudicator performs a regex match):

  diagram_path = /absolute/path/to/{{AUTOSKILLIT_TEMP}}/exp-lens-severity-testing/exp_diag_severity_testing_{...}.md
  

Analysis Workflow

Step 0: Parse optional arguments

If positional arg 1 (context_path) is provided and the file exists, read it to obtain IV/DV tables, H0/H1 hypotheses, controlled variables, and success criteria. If positional arg 2 (experiment_plan_path) is provided and exists, read the experiment plan for full methodology. Use this structured context as the foundation for Steps 1-5; skip the CWD exploration for these fields if the context file supplies them.

Step 1: Launch Parallel Exploration Subagents

Spawn Explore subagents to investigate:

Positive Results Claimed

• Find all conclusions and positive claims in the experiment
• Look for: demonstrates, improves, outperforms, achieves, shows, confirms, validates

Negative Controls & Sanity Checks

• Find negative controls, baselines, and sanity check tests
• Look for: negative_control, sanity, ablation, degenerate, trivial, null, random

Adversarial Conditions

• Find adversarial or stress-test conditions applied
• Look for: adversarial, attack, stress, perturbation, corruption, noise, edge_case

Alternative Explanations Tested

• Find whether alternative explanations were examined
• Look for: alternative, confound, artifact, spurious, coincidence, luck

Prediction Specificity

• Find how specific the predictions were before seeing data
• Look for: prediction, hypothesis, preregistered, expected, prior

Step 2: Assess Severity for Each Claim

For each claim:

1. What error was the test capable of detecting?
2. What would a false positive result have looked like under this design?
3. Were negative controls or sanity checks included?
4. Were adversarial conditions tested?
5. Is the test informative (would a bad result look different from a good result)?

Step 3: Rate Severity and Identify Gaps

Severity ratings: HIGH / MEDIUM / LOW Flag confirmatory theater when design is structured to confirm rather than risk refutation.

Step 4: Create Optional Severity-Flow Diagram

Show Claims → HIGH/MEDIUM/LOW severity tests → Severity verdicts.

Step 5: Write Output

Write the analysis to: {{AUTOSKILLIT_TEMP}}/exp-lens-severity-testing/exp_diag_severity_testing_{YYYY-MM-DD_HHMMSS}.md (relative to the current working directory)

Pre-Diagram Checklist

Before creating the diagram, verify:

• LOADED /autoskillit:mermaid skill using the Skill tool
• Using ONLY classDef styles from the mermaid skill (no invented colors)
• Diagram will include a color legend table

Related Skills

• /autoskillit:make-experiment-diag - Parent skill
• /autoskillit:mermaid - MUST BE LOADED before creating diagram
• /autoskillit:exp-lens-error-budget
• /autoskillit:exp-lens-validity-threats