Benchmark Archaeology

Systematic excavation and critical analysis of AI/ML evaluation methodology. Treats benchmarks as historical artifacts requiring forensic examination — uncovering hidden assumptions, methodological drift, validity decay, and coverage gaps that accumulate over time.

Strategy Routing

| Signal | Route To | |--------|----------| | "audit this benchmark", "benchmark quality", "BetterBench" | benchmark-audit | | "saturation", "ceiling", "score plateau", "when will X be solved" | saturation-analysis | | "does it actually measure", "construct validity", "what does score mean" | validity-probing | | "what's not tested", "coverage gaps", "missing capabilities" | coverage-mapping | | "different papers get different scores", "protocol differences" | protocol-forensics |

Manifest

Strategies (5)

| Strategy | Purpose | |----------|---------| | benchmark-audit | Systematic quality assessment using BetterBench 46-criterion framework | | saturation-analysis | Track score trajectories, detect saturation and failure points | | validity-probing | Challenge construct validity — does benchmark measure claimed capability? | | coverage-mapping | Map evaluation coverage, identify untested capability dimensions | | protocol-forensics | Analyze evaluation protocol differences across papers for same benchmark |

Tactics (3)

| Tactic | Purpose | |--------|---------| | score-trajectory-analysis | Collect historical scores, fit saturation curves, detect inflection points | | artifact-detection | Detect annotation artifacts and shortcuts in benchmarks | | evaluation-protocol-comparison | Compare implementation differences of same benchmark across papers |

Subagent SOPs (9 + 1 shared)

| SOP | Purpose | |-----|---------| | benchmark-inventory | Identify and catalog all relevant benchmarks in target domain | | metric-decomposition | Decompose composite metrics into constituent signals | | contamination-audit | Detect train-test data leakage and memorization artifacts | | construct-validity-assessment | Evaluate whether benchmark measures its claimed capability | | documentation-audit | Assess documentation completeness against BetterBench/Datasheets standards | | capability-taxonomy-mapping | Build capability taxonomy, map existing benchmark coverage | | leaderboard-dynamics-analysis | Analyze leaderboard score distributions, compression, selective reporting | | protocol-element-extraction | Extract evaluation protocol parameters from papers | | benchmark-synthesis | Produce final structured audit report | | saturation-detection (shared) | Detect saturation signals in score trajectories (from literature-survey) |

Budget Table

| Strategy | Benchmarks | Papers | Web Searches | |----------|-----------|--------|--------------| | benchmark-audit | 5 | 30 | 40 | | saturation-analysis | 15 | 50 | 60 | | validity-probing | 3 | 40 | 30 | | coverage-mapping | 20 | 30 | 50 | | protocol-forensics | 5 | 60 | 30 | | Total | 48 | 210 | 210 |

MCP Tools

| MCP Server | Tools | |------------|-------| | brave-search | brave_web_search, brave_llm_context | | apify | rag-web-browser, google-scholar-scraper | | alphaxiv | get_paper_content, answer_pdf_queries | | semantic-scholar | ss_paper, ss_relevance_search, ss_citations, ss_references |

Context Management

All outputs write to context/benchmark-archaeology/:

context/benchmark-archaeology/
  audit/              # benchmark-audit outputs
  saturation/         # saturation-analysis outputs
  validity/           # validity-probing outputs
  coverage/           # coverage-mapping outputs
  forensics/          # protocol-forensics outputs
  synthesis/          # Final cross-strategy synthesis

Each strategy maintains its own state ledger within its output directory.

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Available Strategies

Optional, no fixed order; the final leaf is always a sop.

| Strategy | When to use | | --- | --- | | benchmark-audit | Systematic quality assessment using BetterBench 46-criterion framework — 5 benchmarks, 30 papers, 40 web searches | | coverage-mapping | Map evaluation coverage, identify untested capability dimensions — 20 benchmarks, 30 papers, 50 web searches | | protocol-forensics | Analyze evaluation protocol differences across papers for same benchmark — 5 benchmarks, 60 papers, 30 web searches | | saturation-analysis | Track score trajectories, detect saturation/failure points — 15 benchmarks, 50 papers, 60 web searches | | validity-probing | Challenge construct validity — does benchmark measure claimed capability? — 3 benchmarks, 40 papers, 30 web searches |

Available SOPs

Optional, no fixed order; the final leaf is always a sop.

| SOP | When to use | | --- | --- | | context-checkpoint | Append research process and results to the current Phase's context file. Covers both process and results with genuine substance. Use this skill at plan-designated checkpoint points — typically after each strategy completes or at key decision nodes within a research Phase. | | context-init | Create a new context file for a research Phase. Called once at Phase start to initialize the file that subsequent context-checkpoint calls will append to. Use this skill whenever a new research Phase begins and a fresh context file is needed. |

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