Investigation Methodology — 6 execution patterns

Self-Evolving Skill: If any pattern here fails in practice (wrong results, wasted compute), update the section AND append to references/evolution-log.md. Don't defer.

These 6 patterns executed in service of a-research-foundations. They are the "how" to the foundations' "why". Apply in roughly this order for a new hypothesis.

1. LLM-native data representation — quintile tokens

Before asking an agent to "look at" numerical market data, encode as per-bar token sequences using rolling quintile ranks within a causal window.

Canonical schema:

idx  dir  body_q  range_q  dur_q  uwick_q  lwick_q  loc  sess  fwd+H...

Each quintile is 1..5 in a causal 200-bar rolling window (see Skill A §1). Agents can spot motifs like +1:5:1|+1:5:1|+1:5:1 (three consecutive fast big-up bars) that are invisible in float-space.