reproduce-then-extend

# A reproduction is judged against the study it reproduces When the task is to reproduce published work, the deliverable is not "a good study of this topic". It is: the same quantities, measured the same way, reported next to the published ones, with the agreement or disagreement stated. ## The comparison table is the result Build it early and keep it visible: | quantity | published | ours | agree? | One row per quantity the source study reports and this task asks for. Fill the `published` column at the literature stage, before you have your own numbers — that ordering is what keeps the comparison honest, because a target read after the fact tends to become the answer you find. Where you cannot recompute a published value, say so in the row rather than leaving it blank. Where your number disagrees, say by how much and give your best account of why; a disagreement you explain is a finding, and one you omit is an error the reader will find for you. ## Reproduce first, improve second If you see a better method, the order still matters: reproduce what the paper did, report it, and then show your improvement as a separate result against your own reproduction. An improvement reported without the reproduction leaves the reader unable to tell whether you beat the paper or measured something else. ## Scope Reproduce every arm the task names, not the one that worked. A reproduction that covers one of three models is a reproduction of one third of the study, and the missing tw...