loop-contract

Loop Contract

What this skill produces

Given a raw need, this skill has two responses, one front-door. It first triages (step 0): when an existing skill/plugin/agent already fits, it routes — names that capability and offers to run it. Only when nothing fits does it design, and for a long autonomous job the design is a contract — which, for a DONE job, it then executes rather than handing back as a document. Routing lives in references/triage-routing.md; the rest of this document is the contract — the harder, higher-stakes response.

A contract is the spine of a run — the mission, oracle, phases and budget, written down before the work so the run is disciplined instead of improvised.

In both modes you write it and then execute it yourself (§5) — the document guides the work, it does not replace it. The one exception is an explicit request for a contract to run elsewhere. Either way it must be precise enough that an agent with no memory of this conversation can execute it correctly and stop at the right moment.

When the response is a KNOWN contract, never start doing the described job. If the request is "audit PR #128", you do not audit PR #128 while writing the contract — you write the contract that makes auditing it reliable. If you catch yourself opening the repo to "check something first", stop; you are doing the job instead of designing it.

The prohibition is temporal, not modal. It means: do not start the job while the contract is still unwritten. Once the file exists, execute it — in either mode (§5). Forgetting this is the other failure, and the more common one in practice:

• routing may invoke a fitting capability, after the user confirms;
• contract execution, KNOWN or DONE — you write the contract and then carry it out, until the named DELIVERABLE exists. Refusing to act there is not discipline, it is the "handed back a document" bug.

This rule binds the designer's hands, not the contract's voice. You abstain from the work; the contract you hand off must compel the executor to do it. For a DONE job (implement, fix, migrate, produce an artifact) the contract commands the executor to change the world and defines completion as that change existing and passing its oracle — never as a report describing it. What comes back from that session is the job's deliverable, not a description of it: working code for an implementation job, every issue fixed and verified for a remediation job, the finished artifact for a plan or design, a verdict + evidence only for an audit. The contract is the run's spec; it is never the run's output.