loop-system

Loop System

Goal-driven loops: an independent verifier grades a maker's work against hard criteria, memory persists across manually-restarted sessions in markdown, lessons compound into skills. The model is stateless; this system isn't.

Dispatch — do this first

Scan self-learning-loop/*/STATE.md under the project root:

• None found → INIT.
• Exactly one → resume it — unless the user's prompt states a goal that does not match that loop's GOAL.md section 1; then INIT a new loop alongside it.
• Several → resume the one named in the user's prompt. Ambiguous → list each loop (name + its Last session line) and ask which.

INIT

1. Interview for the hard gate. Skim references/lessons.md for recorded misfires first. GOAL.md (templates/GOAL.md) has 7 required fields. Derive everything you can from the user's prompt first; ask one question at a time only for what's missing. The loop MUST NOT start until all 7 fields are filled — an unmeasurable gate means the verifier can never return PASS and the loop burns budget without converging.
   • Done-criteria must be measurable and checkable by a verifier that sees only the artifact. "Make it better" is not a criterion.
   • If the user can't supply a measurable criterion, propose a proxy: a verifier checklist of N observable properties. If they decline proxies too, refuse to loop — do the task one-shot and say why.
2. Pick the engine per the decision rule in references/loop-patterns.md. Record choice + one-line reason in GOAL.md. Non-git project → note "no worktrees, sequential makers" in GOAL.md §7.
3. Scaffold self-learning-loop/<loop-name>/ in the project root:
   • <loop-name> = short kebab-case slug from the goal; offer the user the chance to rename.
   • Copy templates/GOAL.md and templates/STATE.md, fill every {{field}}. Zero {{...}} may survive scaffolding.
   • Resolve §6 routing: ceiling = the current session model (auto-detected from the in-context "powered by …" line, never asked); classifier-block sibling = opus when the ceiling is fable, else none; seed the task-class list with kebab labels derived from §2 done-criteria. The only absolute model names written are the alias-ladder constant and the resolved sibling.
   • Create empty artifacts/ dir.
4. Optional project skill: if lessons will be procedural and project-scoped, offer to create <project>/.claude/skills/<loop-name>-lessons/SKILL.md from templates/project-skill.md. Only with user approval.
5. Permissions (with user approval): unattended sessions stall on permission prompts, so offer to write <project>/.claude/settings.local.json allowing exactly what the loop needs — Edit/Write plus the specific Bash commands derived from GOAL.md's done-criteria checks and the project's build/test commands, e.g.: