A persistent goal loop for long-running agent work: plan, act, test, review, and repeat until a stop condition is reached. Unlike a normal prompt, it can continue after a turn ends when the goal is not complete.

Use it for tasks that need repeated implementation and checking, with a defined goal, stop condition, and status such as paused, achieved, or budget-limited.

It reduces the need to restart an agent after every incomplete step and makes completion conditions explicit. It is not a replacement for planning or an instruction to run forever.

goal-loop — Skill for Claude Code by skillmds/skillmd

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.

Any agent

npx skills add skillmds/skillmd --skill goal-loop

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/skillmds/skillmd

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install create-agent-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 10 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/skillmds/skillmd/goal-loop/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/skillmds/skillmd/goal-loop)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/skillmds/skillmd/goal-loop"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/skillmds/skillmd/goal-loop/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/skillmds/skillmd/goal-loop"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/skillmds/skillmd/goal-loop.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 20 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 2,381 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin 91% copy Near-identical to another mod 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00020	$0.02381
Opus 5.5	$0.00008	$0.00952
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00004	$0.00476
Haiku 4.5	$0.00002	$0.00238

Measured 1mo ago against content hash a1ceeff3b819, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

goal-loop 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 1mo 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.

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.

Origin

This is a copy

91% identical to goal-loop — 134 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

plugins/create-agent-skills/skills/goal-loop/SKILL.md · 176 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 176 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Agent `/goal` Loop

What `/goal` is

/goal is a slash command that turns an agent prompt into a persistent agent looping plan → act → test → review → iterate until a stop condition is met, the user pauses, or the token budget runs out. Internally called the "Ralph loop."

Agents with the /goal feature right now: Codex, Claude Code, and Hermes Agent.

Key difference from a normal prompt: when a turn ends but the goal isn't met, the agent auto-continues instead of waiting for input.

Lifecycle states: pursuing, paused, achieved, unmet, budget-limited.

When monitoring a running /goal, every check should include a one-line update to the user: what the agent is doing and whether it is on track. Keep it extremely concise.

Not: a budget command, a safety boundary, "run forever", or a replacement for /plan. It's a contract enforcer with a verification loop.

Requirements

An agent with the /goal feature — right now: Codex, Claude Code, or Hermes Agent
The goals feature enabled in the agent's config
Subscription auth — API-key auth does not work. A pro-tier plan is the realistic minimum for long runs.

When to Use it

Use only when all three are true:

Task is >30 min of mechanical work.
There's a verifiable stop condition (tests pass, coverage hit, eval ≥ X, build green).
Repo is agent-ready (working build, decent tests, AGENTS.md present).

Fits: migrations, coverage lifts, TDD feature builds, refactors with contract tests, prompt/eval optimization, deploy retry loops, bug-repro-then-fix.

Bad fits: exploratory work, vague "improve this", anything without a "done" definition, prod credentials, destructive shared-infra ops.

The 5-part contract (every goal needs this)

Objective — one sentence, one concrete outcome.
Constraints — what must NOT change (public API, files, libs, conventions).
Validation command — the exact shell command that proves progress (pytest -q, pnpm test, etc.).
Stop condition — verifiable: "Stop when X passes" OR "when further changes need human/product input."
Documentation — one sentence instructing the agent to write concise, targeted docs for every change, either creating new .md files or updating existing ones.

Read the full file on GitHub · 176 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.

1mo ago First seen · 176 lines · 20 tokens per session scan A a1ceeff3b819

Subscribe to this mod's changes

goal-loop is a skill published in the GitHub repository skillmds/skillmd (143 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 20 tokens to every session and 2,381 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 91% identical to goal-loop, differing in 134 lines, and is treated as a copy.

Building agents Lint Planning agent-orchestration agent-skills ai-agents autonomy claude cli goals mcp

goal-loop next to 6 skills from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
goal-loopskillmds/skillmd	Skill	143	4d ago	MIT	A	20	Claude Code
codew-release-qa-sweepHmbown/CodeWhale	Skill	41k	6d ago	MIT	A	31	Claude Code, Codex
gh-file-issueHmbown/CodeWhale	Skill	41k	6d ago	MIT	A	41	Claude Code, Codex
gh-treasure-huntHmbown/CodeWhale	Skill	41k	6d ago	MIT	A	39	Claude Code, Codex
cw-gatesHmbown/Codewhale	Skill	41k	1mo ago	MIT	A	48	Claude Code, Codex
feishuHmbown/CodeWhale	Skill	41k	6d ago	MIT	A	33	Claude Code, Codex
interviewHmbown/CodeWhale	Skill	41k	6d ago	MIT	A	40	Claude Code, Codex