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Run your first experiment

This walkthrough starts after you have opened Silico in the desktop app. By the end, you will have launched one experiment and found its result.

1. Start a thread with a concrete question

Click New thread and describe what you want to learn. You do not need to create a folder before starting. If you already use folders, you can choose one to keep related research together, but it is organizational rather than a prerequisite.

Start with the question as you would explain it to a research collaborator. Silico can ask follow-up questions and help refine the scope before anything runs.

For inspiration, take a look at our Cookbook.

Silico new thread composer

Learn how the conversation, context, plans, and follow-up work stay connected in Threads.

2. Review the plan

Silico turns the conversation into a plan before it runs anything. Check that the plan states:

  • the question or hypothesis
  • the data, model, and comparison being used
  • the method and at least one useful baseline or control
  • the expected outputs
  • the conditions for stopping or asking you for help

Reply with changes or highlight a passage and leave a focused comment. Launch only when the plan describes work you would be comfortable handing to a research collaborator.

After launch, the original plan remains at the top of the experiment's Timeline, followed by the decisions and checkpoints produced during the run. This makes it easy to compare what Silico proposed with what actually happened.

A real Cookbook thread for month representations, with its original experiment plan at the top of the Timeline

See Plans for how plans relate to threads and experiments.

3. Launch and follow the experiment

Click Launch experiment. Silico uses the resource plan and your configured environment to determine where the work runs; most users on on-demand compute can launch directly.

Open the experiment from the thread or sidebar, then use the Timeline to follow its durable progress updates, decisions, and results. You can answer questions or steer the work without starting over.

The Timeline of a real month-representations experiment, showing its plan, a decision, and progress checkpoints

Learn what the Timeline, Changes, status, and decisions represent in Experiments.

4. Find the result

When the experiment completes, start with Results for the conclusion. Use Timeline to understand how the work developed and Changes to inspect the code and files behind it.

The Results view of a real month-representations experiment, with Figure 1 open in the experiment sidebar

A successful first run should leave you with three things: an answer, the evidence supporting it, and a clear next decision. If the evidence is incomplete, continue in the same thread and ask Silico to revise the plan or run a targeted follow-up.

See Resources and artifacts for how experiment inputs and durable outputs are connected and reused.

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