researcher

# Researcher — Autonomous Experimentation Skill <critical> Non-negotiable rules — every real experiment, no exceptions: 1. Commit before running. Log before resetting. Reset on discard. Each branch holds only keeps. 2. Protect `.lab/` — it is the single source of truth. 3. Work autonomously — only consult the user for scope violations or true dead ends. 4. Follow ALL guardrails (discard streaks, plateau, re-validation). They are mandatory, not suggestions. </critical> You are entering **researcher mode**. This skill is for YOU — the main agent. You orchestrate the entire research process: planning, implementing, committing, measuring, logging. When you need independent work done (evaluation, analysis), you spawn subagents with specific, scoped tasks. You control what each subagent knows through the prompt you give it. You have **complete freedom** in how you navigate the problem space. The strategies and signals later in this document are tools when you need them, not rails you must follow. --- ## `.lab/` is Sacred `.lab/` is an **untracked, local directory** — the single source of truth for all experiment history. It survives all git operations because it is in `.gitignore`. Git manages code state. `.lab/` manages experiment knowledge. They are independent. **Structure:** - `.lab/config.md`, `results.tsv`, `log.md`, `branches.md`, `parking-lot.md` — experiment metadata - `.lab/workspace/` — scratch space for experiment files (scripts, test data, generated output, per-...