Patterns
Pattern: loop-harness-verification
A general-purpose harness for whatever scheduled repo task it wraps — CI triage, issue grooming, a dependency update, a docs sync. One session stages a…
A general-purpose harness for whatever scheduled repo task it wraps — CI triage, issue grooming, a dependency update, a docs sync. One session stages a patch or outbox message in an isolated worktree; a genuinely separate second session verifies it against explicit criteria before anything ships. This is Step 11's maker–checker split, described independently by an external source — and it's the exact shape every
loop-verifierin this library already follows.
Quick facts
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Category | I · Self-improvement / meta |
| Heartbeat | schedule |
| Cadence | per scheduled run |
| Level | L1 (report-only, stages-not-delivers) |
| Cost | Low |
| Group | B — Forward Future Loop Library |
The six parts
| Part | This kit |
|---|---|
| Heartbeat | schedule — per scheduled run of whatever task this instance wraps |
| Body | in an isolated worktree, stages a patch or outbox message; writes only harness-report.md, its own state file, and the run log |
| Spine | loop-harness-verification-state.md — source revision, staged output, verifier result, delivery status, next run |
| Stopping condition | the source's own, verbatim: "ship only after a pass; otherwise preserve the findings and retry only within the limit" |
| Checker | a second, genuinely separate session — the source's own design, independently identical to this library's own loop-verifier pattern |
| Human gate | you read the harness report and deliver or apply it yourself; nothing is delivered until you do |
The three valid stops
- Success — reported as ready-to-ship only after a pass, per the source's own spec.
- Limit — 20 runs, 250k tokens, or the source's own retry limit for a single staged output.
- No progress — 3 consecutive failed verifications with no new findings → preserve the findings and stop.
Source: Loop #17, "Loop Harness Second-Agent Verification Workflow," from Forward Future's Loop Library, original prompt by Istasha. Full attribution: resources/sources.md.