Stress test causal effect robustness
Quantify the omitted-confounder partial-R² strength required to erase a causal point estimate or its statistical significance, benchmarked against observed covariates.
What it's for
Adds a falsification boundary around causal attribution: not only an effect estimate, but how strong hidden bias must be to overturn it.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| benchmark_confounders | array of objects (3 fields) | Evidence | Optional |
| confidence_level | number ≥ 0.8, < 1 | Your calibration | Optional |
| degrees_of_freedom | integer ≥ 20 | Your calibration | Yes |
| effect_estimate | number | Your calibration | Yes |
| null_effect | number | Your calibration | Optional |
| standard_error | number > 0 | Your calibration | Yes |
| strength_multipliers | array of number ≥ 1 item | Evidence | Optional |
Each benchmark_confounders
record
| Field | Type | Required |
|---|---|---|
| id | string (non-empty) | Yes |
| partial_r2_outcome | number (≥ 0, < 1) | Yes |
| partial_r2_treatment | number (≥ 0, < 1) | Yes |
{
"benchmark_confounders": [
{
"id": "observed_complexity",
"partial_r2_outcome": 0.03,
"partial_r2_treatment": 0.02
}
],
"degrees_of_freedom": 100,
"effect_estimate": 2,
"standard_error": 0.2,
"strength_multipliers": [
1,
2,
4
]
} 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.
{
"assumptions": [
"The reported estimate is from a linear or locally linear causal estimand with a valid standard error.",
"Partial R² benchmark associations are conditional on the measured adjustment set.",
"The calculation tests omitted-confounder strength; it does not repair selection bias, interference, measurement error, or model misspecification.",
"Normal critical values are used, so at least 20 residual degrees of freedom are required."
],
"benchmark_scenarios": [
{
"adjusted_effect": 1.9505,
"adjusted_interval": {
"high": 2.3425,
"low": 1.5586
},
"adjusted_p_value_normal": 0,
"adjusted_standard_error": 0.2,
"benchmark_id": "observed_complexity",
"crosses_null": false,
"erases_point_estimate": false,
"partial_r2_outcome": 0.03,
"partial_r2_treatment": 0.02,
"reverses_point_estimate": false,
"strength_multiplier": 1,
"worst_case_bias": 0.0495
},
{
"adjusted_effect": 1.9,
"adjusted_interval": {
"high": 2.2898,
"low": 1.5102
},
"adjusted_p_value_normal": 0,
"adjusted_standard_error": 0.1989,
"benchmark_id": "observed_complexity",
"crosses_null": false,
"erases_point_estimate": false,
"partial_r2_outcome": 0.06,
"partial_r2_treatment": 0.04,
"reverses_point_estimate": false,
"strength_multiplier": 2,
"worst_case_bias": 0.1
},
{
"adjusted_effect": 1.7957, Truncated for display — the full payload is 373 lines.
How it works
Causal inference & experiment design — Separate what a change caused from what merely moved alongside it.
- 1 Quantify the omitted-confounder partial-R² strength required to erase a causal point estimate or its statistical significance, benchmarked against observed covariates.
- 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
- Assignment or adoption timing, interference policy, overlap, attrition, and outcome availability match the estimand encoded by the method.
- A causal label is warranted only when design and diagnostic requirements pass; otherwise treat the result as descriptive or abstain.
Minimum evidence
- effect_estimate: required and organization-defined
- standard_error: required and organization-defined
- degrees_of_freedom: required and organization-defined
How to validate it
Preserve the assignment/adoption design and validate overlap, pre-period or placebo diagnostics, attrition, interference policy, and cluster-level uncertainty; never tune on the estimated effect.
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 Define the management decision, target outcome, aggregate unit, privacy boundary, cadence, and prediction/intervention horizon for this organization.
- 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 Estimate statistical parameters on training history, but obtain costs, utilities, risk tolerance, practical-effect thresholds, capacity, and policy constraints from accountable decision owners.
- 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 Deploy only if the returned decision clears evidence, overlap, calibration, robustness, and guardrail checks; warning, unsupported, schema-gap, and fallback decisions are abstentions.
- 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": "quantify the omittedconfounder partialr strength required" }
→ finds "stress_test_causal_effect_robustness"
gitrevio_capability_describe
{ "capability_id": "stress_test_causal_effect_robustness" }
→ returns the input schema and agent guidance shown on this page
gitrevio_capability_run
{ "capability_id": "stress_test_causal_effect_robustness", "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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