pilotr: Simulate experimental and behavioural data from a portable design specification

Overview

pilotr makes a planned study executable before data collection. A portable specification describes the units, predictors, response family, fixed effects and random-effects structure; the same specification can then be simulated and analysed from R or Python. The important output is not a single power percentage, but a design diagnosis that includes detection, precision, Type S and Type M errors, and model warnings.

Illustrative outputs

These plots show the complementary questions that a simulation-based design analysis should answer: how often the target effect is detected, how precisely it is estimated and how much significant estimates are exaggerated.

Reproducible planning

Treat the specification, simulation seed, package version, number of replicates and fitted model as part of the planning record. The smoke-test settings in the companion blog post demonstrate the pipeline; a real design decision requires many more replicates and a sensitivity analysis over plausible assumptions. Explore the full R documentation, Python documentation or browser app.

Reference

Bernabeu, P. (2026). pilotr: Simulate experimental and behavioural data from a portable design specification (Version 0.3.0) [Computer software]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21266313