Content
51%Weight 40%Scale 1-5Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.
The body excels at progressive disclosure — a concise overview with a verified, clearly signaled one-level-deep reference — but the overview itself is conceptual rather than operational: it explains biases and structures Claude already knows, duplicates the biases table in the Do's/Don'ts, and provides no executable workflow or validation checkpoints for building a backtest.
Suggestions
Replace or supplement the conceptual diagrams with a minimal executable quick-start (e.g., a short walk-forward data-split function or a concrete step sequence: acquire point-in-time data → include delisted securities → split → run → report costs), keeping the bulk in references/details.md.
Remove the redundancy between the biases table and the Do's/Don'ts section (e.g., "Use point-in-time data - Avoid look-ahead bias" restates the table's mitigation column); keep one consolidated checklist.
Add explicit validation checkpoints to the workflow, such as verifying each signal only uses data available at or before time t-1 and reconciling trade costs against a realistic cost model before reporting performance.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Conciseness | The body is short but spends tokens explaining concepts Claude already knows — the biases table ("Using future information", "Only testing on survivors"), the train/validation/test ASCII diagram, and the walk-forward diagram — and the Do's/Don'ts bullets ("Use point-in-time data - Avoid look-ahead bias", "Don't ignore survivorship - Include delisted") largely restate the table's mitigation column. Mostly efficient with some unnecessary explanation and clear tightening opportunities, matching anchor 3; not 2 because the padding is limited rather than pervasive. | 3 / 5 |
Actionability | The body names concrete techniques ("Point-in-time data", "Use delisted securities", walk-forward, Monte Carlo, pre-registration) but contains no executable code, commands, or step-level detail — the executable material lives entirely in references/details.md. This sits between anchor 2 (high-level hints only) and anchor 4 (mostly executable guidance): some concrete direction is given, but key execution details are missing from the body itself. | 3 / 5 |
Workflow Clarity | Building a backtest is a multi-step process, but the body presents only a conceptual data-flow diagram (Training → Validation → Test) and walk-forward window pictures, not an operational sequence with steps to follow. There are no validation checkpoints (e.g., how to verify signals use only data available at time t), matching anchor 2's 'rough sequence present but many gaps; validation absent'; not 3 because the sequence shown is methodology structure rather than listed steps. | 2 / 5 |
Progressive Disclosure | The body is a lean overview and points to a verified one-level-deep reference: "Detailed sections (starting with `## Implementation Patterns`) live in `references/details.md`. Read that file when the navigation summary above is insufficient." The referenced file exists and contains that exact section header, and the pointer includes an explicit read-when condition. This matches anchor 5: clear overview, well-signaled single-level reference, easy navigation. | 5 / 5 |
Total | 13 / 20 Passed |