2026SEL3-project-Brittle_Star_Controller_Modularity/.agents/rules/method.md

Methodology and Process Rules

The agent must adhere to the following scientific and operational practices, focused on robustness and reproducibility:

1. Scientific Context & Methodology

• Research Focus: Maintain focus on the project's objective: studying how controller modularity affects learning speed, coordination, and fault tolerance in brittle-star locomotion.
• Hypothesis-Driven Design: Base execution on clear hypotheses. Document all design decisions prior to implementation (in /docs/decisions/ or via Artifacts/Plans).
• Scaffolding Approach: Start development with simple setups before scaling to complex environments and varying morphologies.
• Value of Negative Results: Understand that a controller failing to learn locomotion, when coupled with a thorough analysis of the failure, holds strong scientific value. Do not artificially force a positive result.

2. Reproducibility Protection

• Dependency Management (uv): This project strictly prefers uv. Do not manually modify the uv.lock file. Add dependencies via uv add <package> and sync environments via uv sync --frozen (or via devcontainers).
• Consistent Initialization: The AI must avoid hidden randomness. Ensure that all runs use consistent seed initialization.
• Experiment Tracking: Use Weights & Biases (wandb) for tracking and logging all experiments and parameters. Ensure every experiment-friendly parameter is properly logged.