⛔ This skill MUST be read in full — not skimmed.

Experiment Workflow

9-stage pipeline for product experiments. Enforces scientific method: pre-registration before data collection, validation before scaling, falsification criteria before analysis.

Pipeline

EXPERIMENT ISSUE (Level: experiment)
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1. ALIGN ──────── shared/align (reused) — go/no-go
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2. RESEARCH ───── shared/research (reused) — background + baselines
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3. HYPOTHESIZE ── NEW — pre-registration gate ⛔
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4. DESIGN ─────── FORK of shared/plan — power analysis, confounds, pre-mortem
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5. SCOPE ──────── shared/scope (reused) — boundaries + E2E
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6. VALIDATE ───── NEW — 1-run gate ⛔ STOP if broken
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7. SCALE ──────── shared/decompose (reused) — incremental runs
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8. ANALYZE ────── NEW — statistical tests
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9. CONCLUDE ───── FORK of shared/verify — falsification check + limitations

Reused: 4 skills. Forked: 2 skills. New: 3 skills.

Hard Gates

Gate	Stage	Prevents
Pre-registration	3. Hypothesize	HARKing, p-hacking, metric shopping
Validation	6. Validate	Scaling broken designs (E013)
Falsification check	9. Conclude	Confirmation bias, ignoring nulls

Anti-Patterns (from 14 Tortoise experiments)

Anti-pattern	Example	Prevention
Inline test called "experiment"	E009	Stage 4: formal design required
Calculation called "experiment"	E010	Stage 1: classify correctly
Scaling broken design	E013	Stage 6: validation gate
Self-referential data	E006	Stage 4: independence requirement
Metric changed mid-experiment	E008 (38%→51-57%)	Stage 3: pre-registered metrics
No falsification criteria	Most experiments	Stage 3: mandatory
Limitations after analysis	E001-E014 (retroactive)	Stage 9: from design

Integration

• issue-creation — Level: experiment fractal field
• issue-workflow — routes Level=experiment → experiment-workflow
• commit-workflow — commits pre-registration before Validate

References

• Design: tortoise/docs/experiment-workflow-design.md
• Epic: tortoise/docs/experiment-workflow-epic.md

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Continue following the workflow as mandated by this skill. Do not skip steps.