A stranger on DEV.to said "run this experiment." I ran it at n=600. Here's what happened — including the part where he caught me reporting post-hoc findings as if they were planned.
The Backstory
Mike Czerwinski read my article about AI agents following rules. He proposed a specific experiment: test prose-format rules under a mechanical gate. Can you get both 100% compliance AND deep reasoning by writing rules as narrative instead of commands?
I had pilot data suggesting yes. Mike pointed out the pilot ceiling was probably noise. He was right. I designed a full 2×2 factorial experiment and ran it at n=600.
But I did something else first. Something I'd never done before.
