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COMPEL Glossary / primary-metric

Primary metric

The single metric whose movement drives an experiment's ship/no-ship decision.

What this means in practice

Exactly one primary metric per hypothesis reduces ambiguity; secondary metrics support understanding but do not decide. Choice of primary metric is itself a governance decision because it encodes what the organization values from the change.

Synonyms

north-star metric (experiment) , OEC (overall evaluation criterion)

See also

  • Guardrail metric — A secondary metric that must not degrade — typically beyond a declared tolerance — even if the primary metric improves.
  • Hypothesis — A falsifiable statement an AI experiment is designed to support or reject — specifying an intervention, an expected direction of effect, a primary metric, and an acceptable effect size.
  • AI experiment — A structured comparison producing evidence for a decision — about a model version, a prompt, a feature set, a retrieval strategy, or a deployment change.