ralph CLAUDE.md

ralph CLAUDE.md is an instructions file for coding agents from snarktank/ralph. It costs 909 tokens per session, scanned A, original, MIT.

A set of instructions for Claude Code, an AI coding assistant, working in the Ralph project. It describes how to choose a task from a product requirements document and report the work.

In plain words
What is it for?
Running Ralph’s automated development loop: reading requirements, choosing the highest-priority unfinished story, running quality checks, updating project instructions, marking completed work, and appending progress notes.
Why use it?
It gives the coding assistant a repeatable process for selecting one unfinished task, checking the code, making changes, and recording progress. This reduces skipped steps and keeps later work informed by earlier findings.

Instructions file

About the project

Ralph is an autonomous coding loop that repeatedly runs AI coding tools until the items in a product requirements document are complete. Developers use it in Git repositories with tools such as Amp or Claude Code, while progress persists through files and git history. Its catalogue add-ons help create requirements documents and convert them into the format Ralph executes.

snarktank/ralph · 21,701 stars · on GitHub

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add instructions/snarktank/ralph/claude-md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/snarktank/ralph

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for ralph CLAUDE.md

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/snarktank/ralph/claude-md.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/snarktank/ralph/claude-md)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/snarktank/ralph/claude-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/snarktank/ralph/claude-md.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 909 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 909 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00909 $0.00909
Opus 5 $0.00454 $0.00454
Sonnet 5 $0.00182 $0.00182
Haiku 4.5 $0.00091 $0.00091

Measured 5d ago against content hash 4dfe2e6d157d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ralph CLAUDE.md scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 5d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

CLAUDE.md · 105 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 105 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Ralph Agent Instructions

You are an autonomous coding agent working on a software project.

Your Task

  1. Read the PRD at prd.json (in the same directory as this file)
  2. Read the progress log at progress.txt (check Codebase Patterns section first)
  3. Check you're on the correct branch from PRD branchName. If not, check it out or create from main.
  4. Pick the highest priority user story where passes: false
  5. Implement that single user story
  6. Run quality checks (e.g., typecheck, lint, test - use whatever your project requires)
  7. Update CLAUDE.md files if you discover reusable patterns (see below)
  8. If checks pass, commit ALL changes with message: feat: [Story ID] - [Story Title]
  9. Update the PRD to set passes: true for the completed story
  10. Append your progress to progress.txt

Progress Report Format

APPEND to progress.txt (never replace, always append):

## [Date/Time] - [Story ID]
- What was implemented
- Files changed
- **Learnings for future iterations:**
  - Patterns discovered (e.g., "this codebase uses X for Y")
  - Gotchas encountered (e.g., "don't forget to update Z when changing W")
  - Useful context (e.g., "the evaluation panel is in component X")
---

The learnings section is critical - it helps future iterations avoid repeating mistakes and understand the codebase better.

Consolidate Patterns

If you discover a reusable pattern that future iterations should know, add it to the ## Codebase Patterns section at the TOP of progress.txt (create it if it doesn't exist). This section should consolidate the most important learnings:

## Codebase Patterns
- Example: Use `sql<number>` template for aggregations
- Example: Always use `IF NOT EXISTS` for migrations
- Example: Export types from actions.ts for UI components

Only add patterns that are general and reusable, not story-specific details.

Update CLAUDE.md Files

Before committing, check if any edited files have learnings worth preserving in nearby CLAUDE.md files:

Read the full file on GitHub · 105 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 5d ago First seen · 105 lines · 909 tokens per session scan A 4dfe2e6d157d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ralph CLAUDE.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository snarktank/ralph (21,701 stars, last pushed 7mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 909 tokens to every session, about $0.0045 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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