loop-engineering

A guide for designing automated agent loops: systems that repeatedly prompt agents to handle work without a person starting every step.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for building or reviewing loops triggered by events such as CI failures, issues, commits, or manual requests, with completion checks such as passing tests or approved pull requests.
Why use it?
It provides a structured way to decide what starts the loop and what evidence means the work is finished.

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/geeksfino/ai-dev-playbook/loop-engineering
Any agent
npx skills add Geeksfino/ai-dev-playbook --skill loop-engineering
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Geeksfino/ai-dev-playbook

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 204 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,548 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
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 $0.00204 $0.02548
Opus 5 $0.00102 $0.01274
Sonnet 5 $0.00041 $0.00510
Haiku 4.5 $0.00020 $0.00255

Measured 2d ago against content hash 07036d781aec, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

loop-engineering 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 2d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 5 executable files (templates/scripts/dev/flush_followups.sh, templates/scripts/dev/loop-verify.sh, templates/scripts/dev/record_dev_loop_verdict.py, …), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

skills/loop-engineering/SKILL.md · 187 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 187 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Loop Engineering Skill

Loop engineering replaces manual prompting with designed systems that prompt agents automatically. This skill scaffolds those systems for a specific project.

Canonical templates: All loop artifacts live in templates/ next to this SKILL.md. Path A (this skill) and Path B (README direct copy) use the same files. BUILD mode copies from templates/, applies interview answers at CUSTOMIZE points, and writes to the project. Never invent structure from memory — read the template files first.

Two modes:

  • BUILD — developer wants to create a loop from scratch → Interview, then copy templates
  • AUDIT — developer has an existing loop and wants it reviewed → Audit Checklist

Determine which mode applies from context, or ask if unclear.


Mode 1: BUILD — Scaffolding a First Loop

Step 1: Interview the Project (ask these, don't skip)

Before producing any files, collect the following. Ask all at once to save turns.

1. What triggers the work? (CI failures / open issues / commits / manual Slack trigger / all of the above)
2. What does "done" look like for a task? (tests pass / lint clean / PR approved / custom condition)
3. Which toolchain? (Cursor / Claude Code / Codex / other)
4. Where should the loop run? (local machine / GitHub Actions / both)
5. Should agents open PRs automatically, or land everything in an inbox for human review?
6. Do you already have a CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, or .cursor/rules? (affects harness + skill paths)
7. What's the budget ceiling per run? (dollar amount or token count — required before shipping)
8. Should deferred follow-ups be `off`, `suggest` (default), or `auto`?
9. Which GitHub repository receives follow-ups? (do not assume it is the checkout repository; for multi-repo ledgers, record `--target-repo` per finding)
10. Which labels and categories require human confirmation? (security, cross-repository, public, or low-confidence are recommended)

If the developer can't answer #2 (the stop condition), stop and resolve it before proceeding. A loop without a verifiable stop condition is the Nodding Loop anti-pattern.

Read the full file on GitHub · 187 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 · 187 lines · 204 tokens per session scan A 07036d781aec

Subscribe to this mod's changes

loop-engineering is a skill published in the GitHub repository Geeksfino/ai-dev-playbook (2 stars, last pushed 24d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 204 tokens to every session and 2,548 once invoked, about $0.0010 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 2026-08-31.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

systematic-debugging

Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes.

obra/superpowers · 21 tokens

brainstorming

You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation.

obra/superpowers · 37 tokens

auto-perf-optimize

Run agent-driven VS Code performance or memory investigations. Use when asked to launch Code OSS, automate a VS Code scenario, run the Chat memory smoke runner, capture renderer heap snapshots, take workflow screenshots, compare run summaries, or drive a repeatable scenario before heap-snapshot analysis.

microsoft/vscode · 62 tokens

chat-perf

Run chat perf benchmarks and memory leak checks against the local dev build or any published VS Code version. Use when investigating chat rendering regressions, validating perf-sensitive changes to chat UI, or checking for memory leaks in the chat response pipeline.

microsoft/vscode · 51 tokens

chat-pet-sprite-creation

Use when creating or changing VS Code chat pet sprite art, sprite sheets, state animations, eye treatments, Stable/Insiders variants, or pet transitions under src/vs/workbench/contrib/chat/browser/widget/media/chatPet.

microsoft/vscode · 53 tokens

cpu-profile-analysis

Analyze V8/Chrome CPU profiles (.cpuprofile) and DevTools trace files (Trace-.json). Use when: profiling performance, investigating slow functions, comparing code paths, finding bottlenecks, analyzing timeToRequest, understanding call trees from sampling profiler data, analyzing layout/paint/rendering, investigating…

microsoft/vscode · 71 tokens