looping

Looping

One task per iteration, each in its own fresh session. Nothing carries over between them except files: the task list holds what is left, git holds the work, and .arcforge-loop.json holds the loop's own bookkeeping. A session can die, a machine can sleep, and the next iteration still knows where it was — and nobody is watching. Every limit you want has to be a flag typed before you walk away.

Step 1 — The list exists before the loop does

The loop's only task source is a markdown checkbox task list passed with --tasks. There is no second task format and no implicit default file.

> arcforge task list v1

- [ ] T1 — Extract the tokenizer into its own module
  - verify: `npm test`
- [ ] T2 — Wire the tokenizer into the reader
  - verify: `npm test`

Each task is one unattended session's worth of work, written so a reader with no context can act on it. Its verify: line is that task's acceptance floor: the loop runs it after the session exits and refuses to mark the task done when it fails. A task without one falls back to the run-wide --verify-cmd; a task with neither is accepted on the session's exit code alone, which only says the session ended, not that the work happened. Run the project's own suite before launching too: the loop cannot tell a baseline that was already broken from a task that broke it, so it will spend a session, fail the floor, retry, and block a task that was never the problem.

• Done when the list exists and parses, every task carries a verify: line or the run supplies --verify-cmd, and the suite has been run here and is green.

Step 2 — Fix the stop conditions before launching

Three ceilings are yours to set — --max-runs bounds iterations (default 50), --max-cost bounds dollars across the whole run (default: no ceiling), and --task-timeout bounds one session's seconds (default 600). The rest fire on their own. "Let it get as far as it can overnight" is the request to decline, not the instruction to follow: guessing a ceiling too low costs one more run, while having no ceiling is unbounded by definition and the loop is spending money on a repository nobody is reading.