# AI Cycle > Walks one request through the governed cycle by loading each stage's own skill body and following it — research, spec, challenge, council, then a brief a person reads. After that person says go, `ai-cycle build ` runs the second half: build, review, verify, security, audit, ship. Trigger for "run the whole cycle on this", "/ai-cycle build 021". Not for one stage on its own — call that stage directly. Not for approving anything: it stops at the brief and has no field in which an approval could be written. - Skill: `arcasilesgroup/ai-cycle` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 2 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add arcasilesgroup/ai-cycle` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/arcasilesgroup/ai-cycle/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Security - License: Apache-2.0 - Author: arcasilesgroup (https://skillmd.com/u/arcasilesgroup) - Updated: 2026-09-10 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/arcasilesgroup/ai-cycle --- # Two halves, and a person between them Not an engine. Each stage is a skill with its own file; load that file and follow it, the way the generated slash command already says. There is no state file, no new verb and nothing here that decides anything a stage would not decide on its own. ## What it produces Half one ends with the brief page a person decides on — `docs/solution-intent.html`, regenerated by `ai-eng report intent --html`. Half two ends with the green gate output, shown in the conversation, or with a page that says exactly why it is not green. ## First half — up to the person `/ai-cycle ` The order of the halves is data, not prose here: read `policy/skill-sequence.toml` and follow it. First half — research, then spec, then challenge, then council, then a brief published as a page: what is proposed, what was refuted, what is missing, and what it costs. Then **stop**. Stopping is the whole of this half. `ai-eng report blocked` already lists a drafted specification nobody has approved, so the halt exists and fires; this hands the person the thing they need to decide instead of a status line. The approval is a record with the specification's exact digest in it, and until that record exists the second half has nothing to run against — the task envelope refuses outright when the bytes moved. ## Second half — after them `/ai-cycle build ` The same map's second half, in order, once an approval record carrying the specification's exact digest exists — the map's `[gate]` section is the line between the halves. Inside `ai-build`, run one task at a time through `ai-eng spec show --task `: two kilobytes, not the whole plan. Where the plan's order allows two tasks at once and the host can start two agents, start two; where it cannot, do them in turn. The critics — review, verify, security — run each in its own context, then `ai-eng audit verify`, then `ai-ship`. ## When the gate goes red It does not stop at the first red and it does not get to cheat. - `just` stops at the first failing recipe, so a red gate has exactly one guilty recipe. An attempt is counted per **task and failing recipe**, never per message and never per gate run: counting messages would give one mistake that broke six tests twelve attempts, and counting runs lets somebody else's failure eat this task's budget. - Before spending an attempt, run the same command again, unchanged, the way the gate runs it — in parallel, because a test that only fails in parallel fails where it matters. Green on the repeat spends nothing and is written down as non-determinism. Two of those notes on the same test in one build is not repair any more: escalate. - **Two attempts.** Only a whole green gate resets the count. A recipe that went green and goes red again keeps its count — measured: one review went red three times in a row before passing, and resetting would have spent six attempts and never escalated. - Never repair by silencing: no `--no-verify`, no suppression comment, no skip mark, no loosened bound, no raised ceiling. If the honest fix is a raised ceiling, that is the escalation, with the arithmetic. - If the count cannot be read, treat the attempts as spent and escalate. - Escalating means a page a person can act on: what failed, what was tried, what it would cost to fix properly. Never a terminal paragraph and never a silent stop. ## What this is not - "The stages are ceremony; the person wants the result" — the order is data, not prose, and the second half refuses to run until an approval record carrying the specification's exact digest exists. ## Done when Half one ends with a brief and no approval written by anybody here. Half two ends with a green gate whose output is shown, or with a page saying exactly why it is not green.