Methods
The Loop Design Checklist
A print-and-fill companion to the A–F method. If any box refuses a one-line answer, the design isn't finished — that resistance is the finding.
A print-and-fill companion to the A–F method. If any box refuses a one-line answer, the design isn't finished — that resistance is the finding.
Identity
- Name:
___________(verb-noun, like every loop in this repo'sloops/) - Job in one sentence:
___________ - Owner (a named human):
___________— no owner, no run - Shape (circle one): ends → conditional · repeats → schedule / event · once → stop, don't build a loop
The six parts
- Heartbeat: exact cadence / condition / event:
___________ - Body: may touch exactly these paths/tools:
___________— everything else read-only - Spine: state file path:
___________— written and committed before beat 1 - Stopping condition (as a spec):
___________— machine-checkable, no adjectives - Checker: script / read-only LLM / human:
___________— never the maker - Human gate: placed at:
___________
The three stops
- Success = the spec above
- Limit = max
____runs/day (would the number embarrass you if it were hit? good) - No progress = 3 unchanged beats → log and stop
Guardrails
- Token cap/day:
____· 80% tripwire → report-only (measured against the cap as currently written) - Kill switch exists and has been tested once:
___________ - One run-log line per beat — silent runs are a failure mode
- Writes are idempotent (safe to retry / double-fire)
- Blast radius written down: worst realistic bad beat does:
___________
Trust plan
- Starts at L1 report-only, watched, on real work
- Promotion rule: one level per proven level; who decides:
___________ - Demotion rule: any incident → drop one level, run the recovery playbook
The seven-item minimum before the FIRST run
The very same list every loop in this repo clears (cf. Step 13):
| # | Item | ✔ |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Provable success condition | ☐ |
| 2 | Run limit | ☐ |
| 3 | Spine written first, committed | ☐ |
| 4 | Report-only (L1) start | ☐ |
| 5 | Human gate placed | ☐ |
| 6 | One log line per beat | ☐ |
| 7 | Kill switch tested | ☐ |
Rather fill blanks than start from an empty page? This checklist comes pre-poured as a
copyable kit — see scaffold-from-template and
starters/_template/.
Live examples of filled-in designs: every loop.md under
loops/ is this checklist, answered for real.
Sources: the checklist condenses the minimum-safe practice of Panaversity's Loop Engineering:
A Crash Course (S1)
and the cobusgreyling/loop-engineering reference repo
(S7, MIT). Full attribution:
resources/sources.md.