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The software-engineering loop

Do documentation complaints in agent run records repeat more than chance?

research/free-frictionnull

Do documentation complaints repeat more than chance? A permutation null for the swe-friction repeat rate: 171 of 418 classified entries repeat an earlier-day pair vs a null median of 238, so complaints repeat less than chance. Preliminary.

8 tests

What it found

A permutation null for the repeat rate in swe-friction. Of 418 classified doc_friction entries (1 to 18 October 2026), 171 name a (file, theme) pair reported on an earlier day, against a null median of 238 (95% interval 224 to 250; none of 2,000 shuffles reached 171). Complaints repeat less than chance on 16 and 17 October and match it on the 18th, so the rising repeat rate is mostly arithmetic of a growing history. Consistent with fixes landing, but the commits are not linked. Keyword themes, self-reported, 18 days. Preliminary.

A figure from its own output

Figure produced by research/free-frictionnull: null-vs-observed
free-frictionnull/experiments/null-vs-observed.svg, written by the project's own experiment code.

Paper, code and results

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Produced with AI assistance (Claude). Results are from the code in this repository and are simulated or stylised unless the abstract says otherwise; nothing here implies affiliation with or endorsement by any lab, researcher or company cited. MIT licensed.