Tips & tricks

Pre-register kill criteria

Before an experiment runs, write down what result would kill it. When that result arrives, kill it, even if the signal looks interesting.

The move

Before an experiment runs, write down what result would kill it. When that result arrives, kill it, even if the signal looks interesting.

When to use it

For every prototype, trial, and pilot. This is how you keep a tireless agent from turning every prototype into a permanent resident. The criteria go in the chat or the project file before the run, where enthusiasm cannot edit them afterward.

Steps

1. State the success bar and the kill bar before the run starts.
2. Name the free or incumbent baseline it must beat.
3. Run it on real work, not a demo set.
4. If the kill bar is met, shut it down and preserve the record.

The gotcha

A genuine signal is the most dangerous outcome: good enough to argue for, not good enough to keep. The criteria exist for exactly that argument.

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