alternative-hypothesis-check

alternative-hypothesis-check is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from EvoClaw/amplify. It costs 43 tokens per session (480 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A review checklist for scientific projects that checks whether a finding could have explanations other than the proposed mechanism. It covers confounding variables, technical measurement problems, sampling bias, batch effects, and false positives from many tests.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before making mechanistic or causal claims in Type D or Type H research projects. It guides checks of experimental design, data quality, statistics, and the wording of conclusions.
Why use it?
It helps prevent presenting an association as proof of a biological cause when other explanations have not been ruled out. When uncertainty remains, it requires describing the limitation and using weaker wording.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it before making mechanistic or causal claims in Type D or Type H research projects. It guides checks of experimental design, data quality, statistics, and the wording of conclusions.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/evoclaw/amplify/alternative-hypothesis-check
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add EvoClaw/amplify --skill alternative-hypothesis-check
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/EvoClaw/amplify

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for alternative-hypothesis-check

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/evoclaw/amplify/alternative-hypothesis-check.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/evoclaw/amplify/alternative-hypothesis-check)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/evoclaw/amplify/alternative-hypothesis-check"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/evoclaw/amplify/alternative-hypothesis-check.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 43 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 480 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00043 $0.00480
Opus 5 $0.00022 $0.00240
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00096
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00048

Measured 8d ago against content hash 45997f77268d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

alternative-hypothesis-check scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 8d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/alternative-hypothesis-check/SKILL.md · 49 lines

What it actually says

Alternative Hypothesis Check

Discipline layer skill. Active during Phase 4–5 for Type D and Type H projects.

Iron Law

NO MECHANISM CLAIMS WITHOUT EXCLUDING ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATIONS

Systematic Check

For each major finding, systematically check:

  • Confounders — variables that could explain the association independently of your proposed mechanism
  • Batch effects [bioinformatics] — technical variation masquerading as biology (plate, lane, date, operator)
  • Technical noise — measurement artifacts, instrument drift, reagent lot differences
  • Sample selection bias — non-random inclusion criteria that correlate with the outcome
  • Multiple testing inflation — testing many hypotheses means some will be significant by chance; confirm FDR/Bonferroni was applied
  • Correlation ≠ causation — temporal precedence, dose-response, and intervention evidence must be present before causal language is used

When an Alternative Explanation Cannot Be Excluded

If an alternative explanation cannot be excluded:

→ It must be stated as a limitation in the paper → Language must be weakened ("associated with" not "causes") → It cannot be presented as a mechanistic finding

Checklist Format

For each finding, produce a table:

Finding Alternative checked Excluded? Evidence
... Confounder X Yes / No ...

Rationalization Firewall

You will hear yourself say... Reality check
"The effect is too strong to be confounding" Strong effects can still be confounded. Check anyway.
"We controlled for the obvious variables" Obvious to you. What about reviewer #2's favorite confounder?
"Correlation is enough for this paper" Correlation is enough only if you DON'T claim mechanism.
"Batch correction was applied" Did you verify it worked? Show before/after.
Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 8d ago First seen · 49 lines · 43 tokens per session scan A 45997f77268d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

alternative-hypothesis-check is a skill published in the GitHub repository EvoClaw/amplify (12 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 43 tokens to every session and 480 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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