autoresearch_template/0_docs/problem.md

Problem Statement

What we're trying to solve

{FILL_IN: 2-3 sentences describing the research problem}

Why it matters

{FILL_IN: why does solving this matter? What's the impact?}

Current best approaches

{FILL_IN: brief description of SOTA and why it's insufficient}

Our approach / hypothesis space

{FILL_IN: what class of solutions are we exploring?}

Metric

We optimize: {metric name} ({lower/higher} is better)

Baseline (untrained or current best): {value}

Baseline std across 3 seeds: {value} (must be < effect size of a meaningful improvement)

Train + eval wall time: {X} minutes (target: 5-40 min)

If variance is too high relative to effect size, use more eval data, a smaller proxy task, or a lower-variance metric -- before running any experiments.

Data

{FILL_IN: dataset, size, splits}

• Train: {description}
• Val (eval.py uses this, FROZEN split): {description}

Constraints

• {FILL_IN: compute budget, e.g. "5 min training on single A100"}
• {FILL_IN: any other hard constraints}

Key papers

See 0_docs/papers/ for full summaries. Quick list:

Paper	Key claim	Trust signal
{FILL_IN}	{claim}	{citations / code / self-report}

Lessons so far

{start empty, accumulate as experiments run}

What has NOT worked

{start empty, accumulate}