The Shift
Part 1 Flashcards · The Shift
Ten cards. Cover the right column, say the answer out loud, then flip. This is the lasting layer — genuinely worth memorizing. (Commands are look-up…
Ten cards. Cover the right column, say the answer out loud, then flip. This is the lasting layer — genuinely worth memorizing. (Commands are look-up material; these are not.)
| # | Front | Back |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The shift, in one sentence | Stop sending instructions by hand; engineer the system that sends them — keep intent and accountability |
| 2 | The four layers, in order | prompt → context → harness → loop |
| 3 | Where do guarantees live? Where does judgment live? | Guarantees in the harness (code, permissions); judgment in the loop (what, when, done, checked) |
| 4 | The small loop vs. the big loop | Small: model↔tools inside one beat (vendor-built). Big: beats, spine, stop across time (you build it) |
| 5 | The six parts of a loop | heartbeat · body · spine · stopping condition · checker · human gate |
| 6 | Body metaphor for each part | pulse · hands · memory · finish line · second pair of eyes · signature |
| 7 | A provable stop is… | a fact a machine can check (file state, exit code, empty checklist) — never a feeling |
| 8 | The three valid stops, every loop | success (condition met) · limit (cap hit) · no progress (3 unchanged beats) |
| 9 | What does a loop inherit from you, and what never? | Inherits the typing/management; never the intent or the accountability |
| 10 | A loop missing its checker fails how? | It grades itself — shared blind spots co-sign their own bugs; weeks of green is luck dressed as design |
Drill until instant, then: Part 1 quiz · Part 2
Sources: these cards test Part 1, which draws on Panaversity's Loop Engineering: A Crash Course (S1), Addy Osmani's Loop Engineering (S5), and Sydney Runkle's The Art of Loop Engineering (S6). Full attribution: resources/sources.md.