causal-design

Causal Design

Design and audit identification strategies for observational causal inference.

Output Path

Per rules/review-artefact-routing.md (auto-loads in research projects (path-scoped to paper-*/ and paper/)):

• Source slug: causal-design
• Write reports to: reviews/<scope>/causal-design/<YYYY-MM-DD-HHMM>.md inside the project, where <scope> is the paper slug (e.g. paper-philtech) for paper-level audits or _project for project-level reviews. Path is relative to the research project root, not the Task-Management repo.
• Never at project root (./CRITIC-REPORT.md-style filenames are forbidden — pre-rule layout).
• Idempotency: if today's timestamp exists, append a same-day descriptor to the path base ({date}-HHMM-revision.md, {date}-HHMM-r2.md, {date}-HHMM-pre-submission.md) — never overwrite.
• Index update: if reviews/INDEX.md exists, write a one-line entry under "Latest per source" pointing at the new file. Otherwise review-recap will rebuild the index next time it runs.
• Infrastructure repos (Task-Management, atlas-workspace, etc.): this section does not apply — the path-scoped rule won't load there.

Modes

Mode	What it does	Entry point
Design	Interview-driven strategy selection and memo production	"Design my causal strategy" / "What identification can I use?"
Audit	4-phase causal inference check on existing paper/scripts	"Check my identification" / "Audit my econometrics"

Default: Design. If the user points to an existing paper or estimation script, auto-select Audit mode.

When to Use

• Choosing an identification strategy for an observational study
• Stress-testing whether an existing strategy is credible
• Verifying that code implements the claimed identification design
• Mapping causal claims to their identifying assumptions

When NOT to Use

• Experimental design (RCTs, surveys, factorial) -- use experiment-design
• Running the analysis or generating results -- use data-analysis
• Literature search or citation gathering -- use an installed literature workflow or scholarly search
• Proofreading or compiling the paper -- use proofread, latex