Hosted FAQ¶
Questions specific to socioverse.fudan-disc.com. For questions about the framework itself, see the general FAQ.
Getting started¶
What should my first message say?¶
State the question, not the mechanism. Say who (which population), what changes (the intervention or the shock), over how long, and what you'd want to measure. For example:
How does a 20% canteen price rise change what students at a Chinese university eat over one semester, and does it push them toward delivery or toward cooking?
That single sentence gives the routing, the horizon, the population, and the metrics something to hold on to. "Simulate a canteen" doesn't.
Your first message also fixes the conversation's language for everything that follows, including the report.
Why can't I edit a reference study directly?¶
Because it's the baseline every derived study is compared against, and because it's shared. Ask for a change and you'll get a fork — a new study with your modifications, carrying over the artifacts and the grounding ledger. The original stays intact, which also means you can compare your version against it.
Can I upload my own data?¶
Not through the interface today. If your study needs data the service can't
reach, describe it to the assistant — grounding a value as a declared
assumption with a stated rationale is a legitimate, documented option. For real
file-based population data, run the study in a local clone, where
provider_ref: file.personas reads a CSV or Parquet you supply.
During a study¶
Can I close the tab while a run is going?¶
Yes. The run continues on the server. Reopening the study replays the conversation and shows where things got to.
The assistant seems stuck. What happened?¶
Most often it is waiting on a question card you haven't answered — the flow cannot proceed past one. Scroll up in the conversation and look for an unanswered card.
If the service restarted while a question was pending, that card may be gone from the replayed history. Say "continue" and the assistant will ask again.
How do I stop something?¶
The Send button becomes a Stop button while the assistant is working. Pressing it interrupts the current turn. The transcript records that the turn was interrupted rather than completed.
Can I run two studies at once?¶
Each study has its own conversation and you can switch between them, but drive one at a time. Simulation runs in particular should not be started in parallel — they share your workspace's 2 CPUs and both will simply be slower.
Results¶
Where are my results, and can I get them out?¶
In your study's directory in your workspace, the same as a local clone: a DuckDB
store with one panel row per agent per step, the aggregate metrics, the fired
events, plus Parquet exports and the rendered report.md with its figures.
There is no download button yet. To take a study elsewhere, the reliable route is to clone the open-source package locally and rebuild it there — everything about the study directory format is identical, and the report contains the numbers and the grounding ledger.
Are results reproducible?¶
Rule-based and deterministic runs: exactly, seeded end to end. Live LLM runs: no — sampling differs run to run. But every recorded run is permanent in its store, and a warm-started iteration replays the parent's stored actions exactly instead of re-asking the model. See the general FAQ.
I ran it again and got different numbers. Is something broken?¶
No — that's live LLM sampling. If you want a controlled comparison, iterate as a new version rather than re-running: the version gate keeps the earlier trajectory and the metric timeline can overlay the two.
Why does my chart look empty?¶
A study plots only the metrics it declares for display. If a metric you care about isn't there, ask for it to be added — that's an iteration, and it takes a re-run to populate.
Money¶
What does it cost me?¶
Nothing personally. Your account carries two allowances — one for the assistant's own reasoning, one for the simulation and external data — of $10 each by default. See Quotas & Billing.
My balance dropped faster than I expected.¶
The two usual causes are a large population × horizon (every agent every step is a decision) and a population survey call, which runs one questionnaire per simulated respondent and therefore scales directly with the respondent count. Each charge is recorded as a line in the conversation — scroll back and read them.
I've run out. Now what?¶
Ask the team for a top-up; both planes can be raised independently. Your studies and results are untouched in the meantime.
Local vs hosted¶
When should I move to a local clone?¶
When you need scale (thousands of agents, long horizons), direct file access, your own model provider, or a study whose run belongs to an external pipeline. The study directory is the same in both places, so moving is a copy, not a rewrite. Start at Installation.
Is the hosted version behind the open-source one?¶
They run the same runtime and the same workflow. The hosted service adds the account, the isolated workspace, the metered balances, and the chat pane — and subtracts direct file editing and unbounded run sizes.