Signal
Something people are looking for and not finding: search demand nobody serves, a queue at a door nobody opened, a market that exists but has no product. The lab reads demand before it reads ideas.
Ends when the demand is measured, or it turns out not to be there.
Hypothesis
One sentence about who pays for what, one number that would prove it wrong, one date. Written before a line of code, and kept on the file to the end.
Ends when someone can say exactly how it fails.
Prototype
The smallest thing that can be put in front of a real person. It runs on a subdomain of hdm.red with real content, real accounts, and a way to pay where the model needs one. Weeks, not quarters.
Ends when real people have used it without our help.
Field
Real traffic, real users, real money. No pitch decks and no friends: the number from the hypothesis is the only judge, and it is read on the date that was set.
Ends when the number holds, or the date passes.
Handover
What survives leaves the lab with its own domain, its own company inside Haydamax and its own operator. What does not survive is closed, and the file stays: the next hypothesis starts from the record, not from zero.
Ends when the lab no longer runs it.