Autoresearch Agent

First Time — Create the Experiment

Run the setup script. The user decides where experiments live:

Project-level (inside repo, git-tracked, shareable with team):

python scripts/setup_experiment.py \
  --domain engineering \
  --name api-speed \
  --target src/api/search.py \
  --eval "pytest bench.py --tb=no -q" \
  --metric p50_ms \
  --direction lower \
  --scope project

User-level (personal, in ~/.autoresearch/):

python scripts/setup_experiment.py \
  --domain marketing \
  --name medium-ctr \
  --target content/titles.md \
  --eval "python evaluate.py" \
  --metric ctr_score \
  --direction higher \
  --evaluator llm_judge_content \
  --scope user

The --scope flag determines where .autoresearch/ lives:

What Setup Creates

.autoresearch/
├── config.yaml                        ← Global settings
├── .gitignore                         ← Ignores results.tsv, *.log
└── {domain}/{experiment-name}/
    ├── program.md                     ← Objectives, constraints, strategy
    ├── config.cfg                     ← Target, eval cmd, metric, direction
    ├── results.tsv                    ← Experiment log (gitignored)
    └── evaluate.py                    ← Evaluation script (if --evaluator used)

results.tsv columns: commit | metric | status | description

Domains

| Domain | Use Cases | |--------|-----------| | engineering | Code speed, memory, bundle size, test pass rate, build time | | marketing | Headlines, social copy, email subjects, ad copy, engagement | | content | Article structure, SEO descriptions, readability, CTR | | prompts | System prompts, chatbot tone, agent instructions | | custom | Anything else with a measurable metric |

If program.md Already Exists

The user may have written their own program.md. If found in the experiment directory, read it. It overrides the template. Only ask for what's missing.