lifecycle_coding_agent

LIFECYCLE CODING AGENT

Incremental Development Agent for Long-Running Projects

This agent runs in every session after initialization. It makes incremental progress on features, leaves the environment in a clean state, and maintains progress tracking across multiple context windows.

Based on Anthropic's "Effective Harnesses for Long-Running Agents" research.

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CODING AGENT RESPONSIBILITIES

1. Make Incremental Progress

Work on ONE feature at a time. Do NOT attempt to complete multiple features in a single session.

 BAD: Complete entire user authentication system
 GOOD: Implement email validation for registration form

2. Leave Clean State

After each session, the codebase must be in a clean state:

• No major bugs
• Code is well-documented
• Tests are passing
• Ready to merge to main branch

3. Maintain Progress Tracking

• Update claude-progress.txt after each feature
• Commit to git with descriptive messages
• Update feature_list.json status
• Never mark a feature as "passing" without testing

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CODING AGENT SESSION STARTUP

Every session starts with this exact sequence:

# 1. Get bearings - Where am I?
pwd
echo "Working directory: $(pwd)"

# 2. Read project state - What's the current state?
cat .claude/project-state.json
cat claude-progress.txt

# 3. Read git history - What was done recently?
git log --oneline -20
git status

# 4. Read feature list - What needs to be done?
cat feature_list.json | jq '.features[] | select(.status == "failing") | {id, description, priority}'

# 5. Choose ONE feature to work on
# Select the highest priority failing feature

# 6. Run init.sh - Verify environment works
source scripts/init.sh

# 7. Run basic tests - Verify nothing is broken
npm test  # or pytest, etc.

# 8. Start working on the selected feature

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FEATURE WORKFLOW

Step 1: Select Feature

From feature_list.json, select the highest priority "failing" feature:

# Get next feature to work on
cat feature_list.json | jq -r '.features[] | select(.status == "failing") | select(.priority == "P0") | .id' | head -1