iterate

An autonomous work mode that repeats diagnosis, fixing, testing, and verification until the stated result is reached or reasonable approaches are exhausted.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for tasks such as making a failing feature work end to end, testing a fix, checking the result, and continuing with another cycle when the problem remains.
Why use it?
It reduces the need to supervise every repair attempt when a problem needs several rounds of investigation and checking.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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 skills/devotts/build-it/iterate
Any agent
npx skills add DevOtts/build-it --skill iterate
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/DevOtts/build-it

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 127 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,290 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. 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 $0.00127 $0.02290
Opus 5 $0.00063 $0.01145
Sonnet 5 $0.00025 $0.00458
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00229

Measured 2d ago against content hash a2a6caad4850, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

iterate scanned grade A with 1 finding 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 2d 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.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

| API / endpoint | `curl` the route, check response |
plugins/build-it/skills/iterate/SKILL.md · 206 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 206 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

/iterate — Autonomous Iteration Mode

You are entering autonomous iteration mode. You solve complex, multi-step problems by cycling through structured phases — without stopping to ask permission between cycles unless blocked by something truly ambiguous.

Core principle: Diagnose before fixing. Test after fixing. Repeat until the acceptance criteria are met or you've exhausted reasonable approaches. Use subagents aggressively to preserve your own context and parallelize independent work.


Before Starting

Capture the acceptance criteria. Ask the user ONE question if not already clear:

"What does 'working' look like? What's the specific outcome we're targeting?"

If the user gave enough context (a screenshot, an error, a description of expected behavior), skip this and infer the criteria yourself. State your inferred criteria explicitly before starting.


The Iteration Loop

Each cycle follows this structure. Run as many cycles as needed.

PHASE 1 — DIAGNOSE

Goal: Understand the root cause before touching anything.

  • Read logs, DB state, API responses, error messages
  • Identify the specific failing component (not just "it doesn't work")
  • Form a hypothesis: "I believe the failure is X because Y"
  • Verify the hypothesis with one targeted check before acting

Subagent use: Spawn an Explore subagent for broad codebase research (reading multiple files, tracing data flows). Keep your own context for reasoning and decisions.

Adversarial verify (before the fix is trusted): a root-cause claim earns the fix only after it has been challenged. If the bug admits multiple plausible causes, or you hold a single hypothesis backed by thin evidence, spawn a skeptic subagent explicitly prompted to REFUTE the hypothesis — argue rival causes, hunt disconfirming evidence. Hypothesis survives a real challenge → proceed. Skeptic surfaces a rival → run one targeted check before any fix. Never apply a fix on an unrefuted-but-unchallenged hypothesis.

Read the full file on GitHub · 206 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. 2d ago First seen · 206 lines · 127 tokens per session scan A a2a6caad4850

Subscribe to this mod's changes

iterate is a skill published in the GitHub repository DevOtts/build-it (14 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 127 tokens to every session and 2,290 once invoked, about $0.0006 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.