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Starter kits

starters/ — install-and-run loop kits

A loop is a handful of small files: a definition, a spine, a budget, a constitution, a skill, and a checker. This folder hands you those files…

A loop is a handful of small files: a definition, a spine, a budget, a constitution, a skill, and a checker. This folder hands you those files pre-poured, so you start a new loop by filling blanks, not by staring at an empty directory.

Start here: one command

You do not need this repository to use a kit. From the root of the project you want the loop to watch:

npx @loop-engineering/loop-kit list         # browse all 20 kits
npx @loop-engineering/loop-kit ci-sweeper   # install one
npx @loop-engineering/loop-kit new my-loop  # start from the blank template

The kit lands in loops/<name>/, with the Claude Code skill and checker placed under your project's .claude/ where the tool can find them. Node 18+ is the only prerequisite; nothing is cloned and nothing is installed globally. What downloads is the kits and the CLI — about 90 kB — not the course. Add --dry-run to see every path first, or --tool claude / --tool opencode to install one tool's files.

The canonical kit: _template/

_template/ is the skeleton every other kit is stamped from — the same files, with every decision left as an <ANGLE-BRACKET> blank. npx @loop-engineering/loop-kit new <loop-name> installs it with your loop's name substituted throughout. Contributors adding a kit to this library copy it in place instead:

cp -r starters/_template starters/<loop-name>

The step-by-step walkthrough (with a worked example and the cross-tool plumbing) is the methods page Scaffold a Loop from the Template.

For all three routes side by side — install, scaffold, contribute — see Getting Started with a Starter Kit.

What a kit contains

<loop-name>/
├── README.md                 quickstart + Loop Ready notes
├── LOOP.md                   the definition — six parts, prompt, limits, ownership, stops
├── <loop-name>-state.md      the spine (from loop-state.md.example)
├── loop-budget.md            caps + the 80% tripwire
├── loop-constraints.md       the constitution (guarantees belong in the harness)
├── loop-run-log.md           append-only, one line per beat
├── .claude/                  Claude Code: skills/loop-task/SKILL.md · agents/loop-verifier.md
└── opencode.json.example     OpenCode: permissions + skills/loop-task.md

Codex and Grok kits share the identical shape (rules file · skill · read-only verifier · scheduler) and are a documented porting step. Every kit, whatever its tool coverage, is validated against the same seven-item minimum before its first run.

How this relates to the course

These are the same files the course teaches you to design by hand:

And the loops that actually built this course — real, filled-in kits — live one folder over in loops/.

Attribution: the starter-kit model is adapted from the cobusgreyling/loop-engineering reference repo (S7, MIT); the loop anatomy from Panaversity's Loop Engineering: A Crash Course (S1). Full attribution: resources/sources.md.