The canonical Ralph loop: each iteration starts fresh, reads the PRD and guardrails, ships exactly one backlog item end-to-end, and records what it learned.
/loop start each iteration with fresh context: read PROMPT.md, prd.json, and .ralph/guardrails.md; pick the single highest-priority item in prd.json not marked done, implement it with tests, run the full check suite, commit and mark it done only if green; if blocked or a check fails twice the same way, append the lesson to .ralph/guardrails.md and move on; stop when every item is done or after 30 turns
claude-code · codex
Implementation note
Write prd.json as small, independently-shippable items — Ralph lives or dies on backlog granularity. Fresh context per iteration prevents long-session drift.
Run a multi-stage software factory pipeline where each agent handles one task in a fresh context, anchored to mechanical gates and held-out test suites.
# AGENTS.md — read this first This is Software Bodega , a software factory: a pipeline that turns an idea into verified code with one human touch per stage. Where state lives — on disk, never in chat history: - factory/STATE.md — current stage + pointer. Single source of truth. - factory/BRIEF.md BLUEPRINT.md CONTRACT.md HANDOFF.md REVIEW.md GUIDE.md - factory/.planning/{spec,decompose,plan}.json — machine-checked artifacts - factory/.planning/gate-results/ — <gate>-<sha>.json verdicts - factory/tasks/ .md — one file per task - factory/progress.md factory/log.md — append-only diaries. Never rewrite. Rules that do not bend: 1. One agent per station. One task per fresh context window. No multi-agent chat. 2. Every gate anchors to something mechanical. LLM judges are fallbacks and must be a different model FAMILY than the author. 3. factory/tests/heldout/ is held out . Never read it, never reference it, never write to it. If you can see it, that is a bug — report it. 4. Repair loops cap at 2. Then resample N=3. Then PARK. Never loop forever. 5. Never weaken a test to make it pass. Never edit CONTRACT.md — it is signed. 6. git add
A graduated path to unattended Ralph runs: start with a single bounded task, add a PROMPT.md spec file, add verification, and only then remove the human from the loop for overnight builds.
Staged path from basic prompt → PROMPT.md spec → overnight Ralph run: start with a single bounded task, add a spec file, add verification, only then remove the human from the loop. Cap the run at 25 iterations; leave remaining work for the next session.
Turn the open issue backlog into a proposed two-week sprint plan with estimates, a dependency ordering, and an explicit cut line, written as a document for the team to edit.
/goal SPRINT-PLAN.md contains a proposed 2-week plan — read all open issues labeled `ready`, estimate each as S/M/L based on the code it touches, order them by dependency and value, draw a cut line at a realistic capacity, and list what falls below it with reasons; make no changes to the issues themselves; stop after 6 turns