Independent Technical Investigation Study

Eligible participants receive one investigation packet containing a short incident description, a fixed evidence set, and one assigned form of analysis material. Participants review the packet and submit a root-cause conclusion, supporting explanation, confidence rating, and evidence references.

Participants have 35 minutes from packet handoff to locked submission.

Remote and asynchronous unless otherwise arranged. Participants do not need to install software or receive access to internal Microfixx systems.

This study uses controlled investigation packets. Participants do not receive administrative access, source-code access, provider credentials, or unrestricted access to the RootCause platform. For this pilot, participants use rendered harness packets, not the live product interface.

Participation is voluntary and currently unpaid. Participation does not create an employment, contractor, partnership, contributor, or customer relationship with Microfixx.

Participants should generally have experience in one or more of:

• software engineering
• systems administration
• networking
• cybersecurity
• incident response
• technical support escalation
• reliability engineering
• quality assurance
• forensic analysis
• technical troubleshooting
• structured evidence review

Applicants do not need a particular job title or degree.

An applicant is not eligible for this study when they:

• helped design or build RootCause;
• are a Microfixx maintainer or author;
• have a financial or personal stake in the study outcome;
• have already seen either frozen case;
• know the ground truth;
• previously participated in the same case;
• cannot complete the 35-minute activity;
• do not consent to the stated data use;
• cannot complete the study independently.

The study may collect: screening responses; broad experience information; eligibility outcome; assigned participant ID; study arm and case assignment; timestamps; submitted conclusion; explanation and cited evidence; confidence rating; completion status; facilitator notes; and technical integrity metadata.