## Refined Phase 4 Strategic Decisions

### **Product Strategy**

**Timeline**: 24-30 hours total (aligned with handover estimates vs initial 3-4 week estimate).

**Remaining Reasoning Priorities** (CoT/PoT/Reflection complete):
1. **P1**: Reasoning-as-Planning (1.5h) - start here to validate patterns
2. **P2**: Chain-of-Verification, Skeleton-of-Thought, Tree-of-Thought (2h each)
3. **P3**: Graph-of-Thought, ReWOO, Buffer-of-Thoughts (2-2.5h each)

**Experiment Scale**: 50-500 samples per experiment with existing cost controls. Parallel execution for multi-approach comparisons.

**Community Features**: Leverage existing CSV export standardization. Add experiment metadata to `StandardResponse.metadata`.

### **Technical Architecture**

**ExperimentRunner Implementation** (7.5h budget confirmed):
- Parallel execution across approaches
- Progress tracking and checkpointing
- Real-time monitoring
- Basic comparison analysis

**Multi-step Framework**: Extend existing Reflection pattern to Chain-of-Verification and Tree-of-Thought using established `multi_step_*` configuration flags.

**Performance Priorities**:
- Response caching: Implement for experiment resumption
- Async support: Defer to Phase 5+
- Memory optimization: Monitor only

### **Implementation Approach**

**Development Order**:
1. Reasoning-as-Planning (validate established patterns)
2. P2 approaches for research coverage
3. ExperimentRunner with established infrastructure
4. Minimal CLI for approach testing

**Leverage Existing Infrastructure**:
- Auto-discovery registry (working)
- Cost control system (complete)
- Multi-step framework (implemented in Reflection)
- Integration testing framework (available)

**Result Format Enhancement**: Add to existing `StandardResponse.metadata`:
- `experiment_id`: For reproducibility
- `reasoning_trace`: Step-by-step details
- `approach_config`: Parameters used
- `performance_metrics`: Comprehensive tracking

This refined strategy focuses on expanding approaches using proven patterns rather than rebuilding infrastructure.
