experiments/

Sandbox layer. Hypothesis testing, prototypes, throwaway research, R&D — anything that isn't real client work.

How experiments/ differs from projects/

	projects/<name>/	experiments/<name>-YYYYMMDD/
Purpose	Real client / product work	Hypothesis, prototype, research
Quality bar	Polish, ship-ready	Rough is fine
Lifetime	Indefinite (active client)	Days to weeks; closed when answered
Promotion to rules/concepts	YES — patterns become canonical	NO — first distill into projects/ or knowledge/concepts/, THEN close
Survives /close-day audit	YES — agent proposes promotions	Limited — /close-day does NOT promote experiment patterns directly

Naming convention

<descriptive-name>-YYYYMMDD — date-tagged. The date is the start date.

experiments/
├── payment-provider-selection-20260427/
├── landing-page-redesign-20260415/
└── claude-tts-prototype-20260322/

Why date-tagged (not numbered): aligns with the kit-wide date-tagging convention. Lets you sort chronologically, see at a glance how old something is, and /close-day can check freshness ("3 experiments older than 30 days — still active or close them?").

Inside an experiment

Every experiment folder has at least:

• EXPERIMENT.md — hypothesis, method, goal, result, lessons (use EXPERIMENT-TEMPLATE.md as the starting point)

Optionally:

• BACKLOG.md — if the experiment is multi-step
• Code, notes, screenshots, research files — anything goes, this is a sandbox
• Sub-experiments allowed: experiments/parent-20260415/sub-test-20260420/

Lifecycle

1. Open — agent creates experiments/<name>-YYYYMMDD/EXPERIMENT.md when user says "let's try X" / "prototype Y" / "test the hypothesis that Z"
2. Work — write code, notes, results inside the folder
3. Close — when user says "the experiment is done" / "we have an answer", agent runs the distill ritual:
   • Successful: lessons → knowledge/concepts/<topic>.md, code → projects/<name>/, then rm -rf experiments/<name>-YYYYMMDD/ (git history remembers)
   • Failed with lessons: knowledge/concepts/<topic>-failed.md capturing why, then delete folder
   • Inconclusive: leave as-is, revisit on next /close-day
4. Forgotten experiments — /close-day flags experiments older than 30 days that haven't been closed; agent asks user

Agent triggers

When the user says any of these, agent creates an experiment, NOT a project:

• "let's experiment with..."
• "prototype X"
• "I want to test the hypothesis that..."
• "throwaway test for..."
• "quick R&D on..."

If unsure: ask. "Is this real work for an existing project, or an experiment to figure something out?"