Audit proxy metric integrity

Audit whether an incentivized proxy structurally decoupled from outcomes or harmed guardrails using counterfactual residuals, bootstrap break tests, placebos, and multiplicity correction.

What it's for

Every metric you incentivize eventually gets gamed. This tests whether a proxy has structurally decoupled from the outcome it stands for, or damaged a guardrail on the way.

Detects when a dashboard target stopped representing the outcome leadership actually wanted, without inferring individual misconduct.

What you give it

Inputs split into evidence read from your connected systems, calibration your team owns, and numerical controls that affect precision but never the result's meaning.

Field Type Role Required
bootstrap_draws integer ≥ 200, ≤ 10000 Numerical control Optional
guardrail_directions object Evidence Yes
incentive_start_index integer ≥ 10 Your calibration Yes
observations array of objects (4 fields) Evidence Yes
seed integer Numerical control Optional

Each observations record

Field Type Required
guardrails object Yes
id string (non-empty) Yes
outcome number Yes
proxy number Yes
Example input
{
  "bootstrap_draws": 200,
  "guardrail_directions": {
    "failure_rate": "lower_is_better"
  },
  "incentive_start_index": 20,
  "observations": [
    {
      "guardrails": {
        "failure_rate": 15
      },
      "id": "week-0",
      "outcome": 20,
      "proxy": 10
    },
    {
      "guardrails": {
        "failure_rate": 14.8
      },
      "id": "week-1",
      "outcome": 21.5,
      "proxy": 11
    },
    {
      "guardrails": {
        "failure_rate": 14.6
      },
      "id": "week-2",
      "outcome": 23,
      "proxy": 12
    },
    {
      "guardrails": {
        "failure_rate": 14.4
      },
      "id": "week-3",
      "outcome": 24.5,
      "proxy": 13
    },
    {
      "guardrails": {
        "failure_rate": 14.2
      },
      "id": "week-4",

Truncated for display — the full payload is 266 lines.

What you get back

This is the actual output of running the example above — computed by the same function the platform calls, not an illustration.

Example output
{
  "classification": "multiple_proxy_integrity_signals",
  "governance": {
    "misconduct_inference": false,
    "note": "A proxy-integrity signal can reflect process changes, instrumentation drift, seasonality, or model misspecification; investigate causes before attributing intent.",
    "unit_of_analysis": "aggregate_period"
  },
  "harmful_guardrail_signals": [
    "failure_rate"
  ],
  "method": "bootstrap_structural_break_goodhart_audit_v1",
  "outcome_decoupling_signal": true,
  "proxy_accelerated_after_incentive": true,
  "proxy_acceleration_z": 157368883285.6978,
  "sample": {
    "incentive_start_id": "week-20",
    "periods": 32,
    "post_periods": 12,
    "pre_periods": 20
  },
  "series_diagnostics": [
    {
      "direction": "higher_is_better",
      "placebo_break_percentile": 1,
      "post_counterfactual_residual_interval_90": {
        "high": -5779250419.9267,
        "low": -9618524001.214
      },
      "post_counterfactual_residual_z": -7750629442.1241,
      "post_mean": 50.65,
      "post_proxy_elasticity": 0.02,
      "pre_mean": 34.25,
      "pre_proxy_elasticity": 0.5,
      "proxy_elasticity_change": -0.48,
      "series": "outcome",
      "structural_break_p_value": 0.005,
      "structural_break_q_value": 0.005,
      "structural_break_statistic": 102811663207.1081
    },
    {
      "direction": "lower_is_better",
      "placebo_break_percentile": 1,
      "post_counterfactual_residual_interval_90": {
        "high": -13890103458.8606,

Truncated for display — the full payload is 59 lines.

How it works

Statistical audit & measurement — Check whether a number is fit to decide on: coverage, timing, reconciliation, and the gaps a dashboard hides.

  1. 1 Audit whether an incentivized proxy structurally decoupled from outcomes or harmed guardrails using counterfactual residuals, bootstrap break tests, placebos, and multiplicity correction.
  2. 2 Evaluate the method-specific diagnostics and gates returned by the function, then abstain unless the declared decision clears them under locally governed thresholds.

Before you trust it

Every tool in the catalog ships with the conditions under which its answer is meaningful — and the conditions under which it should abstain instead of guessing.

Assumptions & guardrails

  • Metric definitions, weights, aggregate grain, sampling, missingness, dependence, and comparison windows correspond to the management claim being audited.
  • Association, instability, or measurement quality is not a causal effect and must not be converted directly into an individual employment decision.

Minimum evidence

  • observations: required and organization-defined
  • incentive_start_index: required and organization-defined
  • guardrail_directions: required and organization-defined

How to validate it

Validate on future periods or held-out aggregate units, compare with a simple baseline, and require stability across plausible metric definitions and decision thresholds.

Calibrating it to your org

Same for everyone

The mathematical kernel, validation rules, method version, and JSON output semantics are organization-independent; no tenant-trained coefficients or company benchmark is embedded in the function.

Specific to you

  • metric/outcome definitions, entity grain, observation window, costs, thresholds, priors, and constraints represented by the function inputs

Calibration workflow

  1. 1 Define the management decision, target outcome, aggregate unit, privacy boundary, cadence, and prediction/intervention horizon for this organization.
  2. 2 Build a tenant-scoped historical cohort using only information available before each prediction or decision; preserve zero periods, censoring, assignment probabilities, and unresolved outcomes when the method requires them.
  3. 3 Estimate statistical parameters on training history, but obtain costs, utilities, risk tolerance, practical-effect thresholds, capacity, and policy constraints from accountable decision owners.
  4. 4 Validate on later time windows or held-out aggregate units at the deployment grain, against a simple baseline and the function-specific validation strategy.
  5. 5 Deploy only if the returned decision clears evidence, overlap, calibration, robustness, and guardrail checks; warning, unsupported, schema-gap, and fallback decisions are abstentions.
  6. 6 Monitor realized outcomes, data drift, coverage, and decision regret; recalibrate at a governed cadence or after a detected regime/definition change, never merely because a stakeholder dislikes the result.

Call it from your AI

You don't wire up 388 tools in your MCP client. The GitRevio MCP server exposes 18 tools, three of which let an agent search the catalog, read a tool's schema, and run it — so the assistant finds this one on its own.

gitrevio_capabilities_search
  { "q": "audit whether an incentivized proxy structurally" }
  → finds "audit_proxy_metric_integrity"

gitrevio_capability_describe
  { "capability_id": "audit_proxy_metric_integrity" }
  → returns the input schema and agent guidance shown on this page

gitrevio_capability_run
  { "capability_id": "audit_proxy_metric_integrity", "arguments": { ... } }
  → returns the result shown above

Works in Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, Continue.dev, Goose and Aider. See the MCP server.

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