Goal Loop

goal-loop

A thin, modeless orchestrator that closes the loop the three existing skills leave open: [[goal-elicit]] writes a verifiable artifact and stops; [[goal-drive]] drives it to verified done; [[prism]] reviews from many models. goal-loop sequences elicit → [spec-review] → drive → review → fix → re-review and owns the one thing none of the three can: the loop edge — turning review findings into the next drivable unit, gated by you. It composes the three skills; it never modifies, re-implements, or absorbs them.

Two modes. Interactive (default): both human gates (spec sign-off, fix classification) call AskUserQuestion and need a live operator. Autonomous (--auto): for headless/unattended runs under the native /goal command, where a blocking AskUserQuestion would deadlock the turn (the /goal evaluator fires only after a turn finishes). --auto replaces both gates with fail-closed policies, auto-fixes only the frozen-oracle-RED subset, and defers everything needing scope judgment to a morning report — see § Autonomous mode (--auto) and references/loop-protocol.md § Autonomous mode.

Two non-negotiables (the design hinges on these)

1. You decide which findings become fixes — goal-loop never blind-applies them. This is not caution; it's measured. On a real run only ~17% of review findings mapped cleanly to an existing acceptance criterion; the rest were defects with no acceptance line, out-of-scope improvements, or scope calls only a human can make (a human out-scoped the loudest finding and vetoed a multi-reviewer refactor). Two harnesses confirm a mechanism can't safely auto-apply them: scripts/empirical_gate.py (a router false-applies F1/F16 — identifier-collision, semantic not lexical) and scripts/oracle_gate.py (verification-anchoring is safe but auto-applies ~nothing without strong pre-signed oracles). So goal-loop routes mechanically and proposes; you classify the actionable batch. The path to real auto-apply is oracle-gating — see Report-only.
2. The original goal artifact is binding authority. Every accepted fix maps to an existing acceptance / done_when / constraint, or a new acceptance line you author. A real defect with no acceptance line (in_scope-unmapped) is surfaced in the actionable batch — to accept it you author the new acceptance line first; out-of-scope and could findings are deferred to the loop ledger (never written into the source artifact); scope changes require explicit promotion. (The one exception is the spec-review phase, which edits the artifact before it locks; once you sign off, it's frozen.)

Modeless & stepped — one phase per invocation

The artifact + the loop ledger on disk are the state; "continue" means "advance the next phase the ledger says is unfinished." Each invocation advances exactly one phase — elicit, spec-review, drive, review, classify, or fix — persists current_phase, and stops. It does not chain phases. That's deliberate: a long inline run triggers auto-compaction, which can drop the orchestration instructions; because state lives on disk, re-invoking re-reads this file and the ledger says exactly where you are. Resume the way goal-drive resumes — reconcile against the repo, trust verified facts. No Stop hook, no plugin, no humanize coupling: it's a portable skill.

Read references/loop-protocol.md in full before entering any phase — it is the authoritative source for the ledger schema, the exact router procedure, normalization, crash-safety write ordering, the review-packet template, and the per-backend resume contracts; the tables here are summaries only.

The two human gates (spec-review sign-off, classify disposition) each contain exactly one user interaction and remain the active phase until the answer is captured: render the choices, call AskUserQuestion, and only after the reply write the durable artifacts (spec edits + spec_approved, or the disposition + fix-rN.checklist.json) and then advance current_phase. If re-entered before the reply (interrupted/compacted), re-present the same batch — never advance or write a fix on a partial disposition.

Runtime portability & the review backend

Portable; never detects its runtime. Only the review backend is Claude-specific, and it's pluggable:

• --review prism (default) — multi-model review (Claude-only). Resolved by capability, not runtime: if the prism skill is unavailable or refuses (off-Claude), goal-loop writes .goals/<id>.review-rN.request.md and stops (review_backend_unavailable).
• --review external — write the review packet and stop; you review elsewhere, place the synthesis, and continue resumes at classify.
• --review local — single-agent skeptical self-review in-session; portable, weaker.
• --review none — elicit + drive only; GOAL-LOOP COMPLETE after the drive marker, no loop.

Spec-review (mod #1 — on by default)

Runs by default (config 1): before driving, review the goal spec itself — acceptance criteria testable/complete? gaps, contradictions, untestable done_when, likely findings that won't map later? You approve/edit the strengthened spec (the one pre-lock edit point), which then freezes as the binding authority. Spec quality is the single biggest lever — it raises the actionable fraction and is the path toward safe auto-apply — so it is the default, not opt-in. --no-spec-review skips it, and goal-loop auto-skips for a Clear-domain artifact (a one-shot contract goal-elicit fast-laned — no review tax on trivial goals). Override the depth with --spec-review "<config>". On reject at sign-off → GOAL-LOOP STOPPED (spec_rejected); re-run goal-elicit. Details: references/loop-protocol.md § Spec review.

Durability triage — tune autonomy to the goal's shelf life

The loop reads the artifact's durability field (goal-elicit's Phase 0 axis: mechanical | disposable | load_bearing; default load_bearing if absent). It encodes how trustworthy a hands-off loop is for this output — drawing on the post's distinction (where-loops-work vs. lasting-code authorship): loops are reliable transforming existing code (mechanical) or making short-lived artifacts (disposable), and risky authoring lasting code (load_bearing) unattended. It tunes exactly two levers and nothing else (it never widens what's fixable or relaxes the two non-negotiables): spec-review auto-skips for mechanical/disposable, and the legibility lens + regression guard are mandatory for load_bearing but advisory otherwise. Full table: references/loop-protocol.md § Durability.

Autonomous mode (--auto) — summary; mechanism in the reference

--auto runs the loop unattended under Claude Code's native /goal. Because the /goal evaluator fires only after a turn finishes and is tool-less, a blocking AskUserQuestion would deadlock — so --auto replaces both human gates with fail-closed policies and terminates on printed markers. It changes only gate behavior, termination, and handoff, composes the same three skills, and is strictly more conservative than interactive mode, never less. The load-bearing invariants: spec-review runs report-only (elicited spec frozen as-is, never auto-edited); classify AUTO-FIXes only the in_scope-mapped finding whose frozen oracle is RED and DEFERs/HALTs everything else (cross-model consensus may reorder the queue, never authorize a fix; no new acceptance line is ever auto-authored — scope mutation, invariant #2). Oracle coverage is ~empty by default, so a first run typically auto-fixes nothing and just produces the morning queue — correct, not a failure. Off-Claude / no review backend ⇒ no auto-fix (defer all); never fakes cross-model review. The run ends on GOAL-LOOP AUTO-COMPLETE / AUTO-HANDOFF / AUTO-HALTED: <id> — <reason>, each with an evidence block + the .goals/<id>.auto-report.md report.

Read references/loop-protocol.md § Autonomous mode before any --auto run — it is authoritative for the Gate A / Gate B policy clauses, the frozen-oracle manifest (.goals/<id>.oracles.json, authored at sign-off and validated via scripts/oracle_manifest.py), the termination set, the morning report, and the optional --worktree / Stop-hook hardening.

What it produces

• .goals/<id>.loop.json — an index-only ledger (round, phase, prism config, artifact paths, review/findings paths, dispositions, round_start_ref, stop reason). Schema: references/loop-protocol.md.
• .goals/<id>.spec-review.md — the spec-review synthesis (unless --no-spec-review / Clear-domain).
• .goals/<id>.review-rN.md / .review-rN.findings.json — the review synthesis + normalized findings.
• .goals/<id>.oracles.json — (optional) the frozen-oracle manifest authored at sign-off; what --auto consults to find auto-fixable RED oracles. Schema + use: references/loop-protocol.md § The frozen-oracle manifest.
• .goals/<id>.auto-report.md — (under --auto) the morning report: outcome, auto-applied fixes, and the pre-classified decision queue. Written before the terminal marker.
• .goals/<id>.fix-rN.checklist.json — a child fix artifact per round, built from the findings you accepted. The source artifact stays immutable; findings never patch it.

Invocation

/goal-loop [--auto] [--prism "<config>"] [--no-spec-review | --spec-review "<config>"]
           [--review prism|external|local|none] [--max-rounds N] [--artifact <path>] -- <request>
/goal-loop continue [<id>]

• --auto — unattended mode (see § Autonomous mode): both human gates become fail-closed policies, no AskUserQuestion, terminates on the AUTO-* markers. Intended to run under the native /goal command. Requires a status: ready artifact (--artifact <path> or a pre-existing .goals/<id>.goal.md) — it never interviews; with no ready spec it emits GOAL-LOOP AUTO-HALTED: <id> — needs_artifact before any AskUserQuestion. Since it cannot ask for the review depth, it uses --prism if given, else the ledger's prism_config, else defaults to 2.
• --prism "<config>" — forwarded verbatim to prism (2, 2 2, …; prism syntax is N [M] — N parallax, M gpt-pro, no effort token). Omitted (interactive) → goal-loop asks at the review gate; omitted under --auto → defaults to 2 (above).
• --max-rounds N — review/fix cycles (default 2; loops oscillate). continue --max-rounds <N> extends.
• --no-spec-review / --spec-review "<config>" — skip the (default-on) spec review, or override its depth. (Auto-skipped for a Clear-domain one-shot artifact.)
• --artifact <path> — start from an existing artifact (skip elicit). continue [<id>] resumes the sole non-terminal .loop.json (lists candidates if more than one; if none, say so and offer to start one).

Invocation mechanics

Invoke goal-elicit, goal-drive, and prism via the Skill tool, inline in this owning session — never via Agent/Task/subagent. A Skill-invoked goal-drive is inline and retains full edit authority (its leaf/read-only contract applies only when spawned as a subagent, which goal-loop never does). Invoke Skill(prism, "<config> <review packet>") at top level; prism owns its own read-only-leaf fan-out. Wait for the invoked skill's terminal marker before advancing the ledger.

The loop

State = the source artifact + .goals/<id>.loop.json. Advance exactly one phase per invocation, persist the ledger, STOP. On (re)entry, read current_phase, reconcile against the repo, run only it:

elicit    no ready artifact → goal-elicit (once). Stop after: ready → read `durability` (default
          load_bearing); current_phase = spec-review (default; → drive directly if --no-spec-review,
          a Clear-domain one-shot artifact, or a mechanical/disposable artifact); draft/blocked → stopped. ← ends invocation
spec-rev  (default; skipped by --no-spec-review / Clear-domain / mechanical|disposable) freeze a SPEC packet {objective ·
          acceptance/done_when · scope · constraints}; run the review backend; persist .spec-review.md;
          present findings; YOU approve/edit the spec (pre-lock); on sign-off freeze → current_phase=drive;
          on reject → stopped (spec_rejected). STOP.                                          [human gate]
drive     **record round_start_ref FIRST** (on entering drive — the diff baseline), then goal-drive
          (Skill, inline). On GOAL-DRIVE COMPLETE + verification → current_phase=review. On STOPPED →
          stopped. STOP.                                                                   ← ends invocation
review    if round > max_rounds → stopped (max_rounds), do not dispatch. Else if `prism_config` is empty,
          ask the user for it now (under `--auto`: do not ask — default to `2`); freeze the review packet {artifact · diff since round_start_ref ·
          COMPLETE marker · verification + the legibility lens}; run the backend; persist .review-rN.md,
          record this round's `legibility_delta`, normalize → .findings.json, set current_phase=classify
          LAST. STOP. (load_bearing: 2nd consecutive `worse` → stopped (legibility_regression))  ← ends invocation
classify  the router mechanically **disposes the non-actionable bulk** (you never see it):
          out-of-scope/`could` → DEFER (ledger), needs_user/ambiguous/one-way-door/recurrence → HALT
          (GOAL-LOOP STOPPED). Only the remaining **actionable batch** (in_scope-mapped +
          in_scope-unmapped) is surfaced — a separate step. YOU disposition that batch via
          AskUserQuestion (accept/defer/reject per item; for an in_scope-unmapped accept, author the new
          acceptance line first). Capture the reply, write .fix-rN.checklist.json from accepted findings,
          THEN set current_phase=fix. `reject` → discard the round → review gate. STOP.    [human gate]
fix       **record round_start_ref FIRST** (on entering fix — the pre-patch baseline for the re-review),
          then goal-drive (Skill, inline) on .fix-rN.checklist.json. On COMPLETE → current_phase=review,
          round+1. STOP.                                                                   ← ends invocation

The unit of iteration is one review/fix round. The two human gates are the spec sign-off / artifact and review→fix (classify); the per-phase STOPs keep any one invocation short enough to survive compaction. The router shrinks the classify gate from "every finding" to "the small actionable batch" — that's the ergonomic win over a raw per-finding gate, kept honest by leaving you the decision.

Under --auto, the same phase sequence runs, but spec-rev and classify execute the autonomous policies instead of AskUserQuestion — spec-review is report-only (freeze elicited spec), and classify auto-fixes only the oracle-RED subset while deferring/halting the rest — and the loop ends on an AUTO-* marker. See § Autonomous mode and references/loop-protocol.md § Autonomous mode.

Composition wiring

Rails goal-loop enforces on itself: never asks goal-drive to invoke prism; never re-elicits mid-loop (if review shows the goal is wrong, stop and tell the user to re-run goal-elicit); top-level user-invocable only.

Review → fix (the router proposes; you decide)

After review, the router mechanically disposes the bulk so you don't have to: out_of_scope and could → DEFER (recorded in the ledger, a suggested ## Emergent line printed, source untouched); needs_user / one-way-door / recurrence → STOP. It then prints a one-line deferred/stop audit (counts by scope+severity + the titles of any deferred blocker/should, with expand <id> to read one) so the bulk is auditable, not invisible, and surfaces only the remaining actionable batch as a numbered list — each {severity, claim, proposed fix, proposed acceptance, proposed verification, nominated AC} — and you reply defaults, 1a 2c …, reassign <id>→<AC> (correct a wrong nomination), reject, or approve. The router's maps_to is a nominee, not an authority — its lexical mapping errs in both directions, so confirm or reassign it. Nothing is written to a fix checklist until you approve. Buckets, the finding schema, the normalization procedure, and the fix-checklist template: references/loop-protocol.md.

Stop / convergence / resumption

• GOAL-LOOP COMPLETE — the latest review surfaces no accepted blocker/should finding, every fix artifact is verified done, and the ledger points to the evidence. Echo the marker last. (If you approve a round with zero accepted but some deferred, ask whether to mark it clean → COMPLETE or return to review — don't assume done.)
• GOAL-LOOP COMPLETE (no-review) — with --review none, after the drive marker (no loop).
• --auto markers — under --auto the loop ends instead on GOAL-LOOP AUTO-COMPLETE: <id> (drive done, oracles GREEN, decision queue empty), GOAL-LOOP AUTO-HANDOFF: <id> (converged, a deferred queue awaits — the common case), or GOAL-LOOP AUTO-HALTED: <id> — <reason>, each preceded by an evidence block and paired with .goals/<id>.auto-report.md. Details + the /goal condition: references/loop-protocol.md § Autonomous mode.
• GOAL-LOOP STOPPED — with stop_reason ∈ {goal_drive_stopped, review_backend_unavailable, needs_user, spec_rejected, review_rejected, scope/authority-exceeded, one-way-door, max_rounds, oscillation (same finding recurs), normalization_failed (extraction incomplete/invalid), findings_escalating (each round surfaces more/higher-severity findings than the last — the work is regressing), legibility_regression (two consecutive rounds make load_bearing code less comprehensible while appearing more robust — the loop's amplified failure mode; see the legibility ratchet)} — under --auto the AUTO-HALTED set adds several --auto-specific reasons (artifact, baseline, lock, path, oracle-manifest, oracle-timeout, spec-contradiction), drops the interactive-only spec_rejected (--auto freezes the spec, never rejects), folds findings_escalating into the --auto regression guard, and keeps legibility_regression as a named AUTO-HALTED reason (the delta has no oracle to fold into); full list: references/loop-protocol.md § Termination. Print the marker first, then hand back.
• Resume — read current_phase, reconcile against verified artifacts + repo (files over the pointer; if review-rN.findings.json exists, skip re-review → classify). Crash-safety write order: references/loop-protocol.md § Crash safety.

Report-only today — and the one upgrade path

Interactive mode ships report-only (route, auto-handle the 83% DEFER/STOP, confirm only the small actionable batch). The only fundamentally-safe way to remove that confirm is oracle-gating, not a smarter router — verify each change against a pre-signed, frozen executable oracle (auto-actionable only when its acceptance oracle is RED; apply only on RED→GREEN + no regression + anti-overfit; F1/F16 STOP by construction). --auto is the opt-in that enables exactly this gate (and nothing more): unattended, it AUTO-FIXes only the oracle-RED subset and defers the rest to a morning queue. oracle_gate.py PASSES (false-auto=0) but shows the covered subset is ~empty until you author stronger oracles at sign-off — so --auto with no oracles auto-fixes nothing and is review-plus-queue, by design. Full mechanism + the 15-perspective verdicts: references/loop-protocol.md § Autonomous mode and § The path beyond report-only, `/.ai/reports/20260616-2243-goalloop-auto-design.md, and ~/.ai/reports/20260612-2230-goal-loop-fundamental-verdict.md`.

Single biggest risk

Scope mutation through review-to-fix conversion — under load a review always produces plausible improvements; if they silently become work, the loop stops driving your goal and lets reviewers redefine it. Defense is the two non-negotiables: you classify the actionable batch (nothing written until approve) + binding-authority (fixes map to acceptance or you author it; out-of-scope never touches the source), plus the round cap and oscillation guard.

The legibility ratchet (the second risk)

A fix loop amplifies the model's worst structural habit: each round answers a local failure with a local defense — a fallback for an impossible state, a guard, duplicated machinery — so the code grows more robust-looking and less comprehensible every iteration, the failure Karpathy frames as models being "mortally terrified of exceptions." Severity escalation and scope mutation guards don't catch this: the diff stays in-scope and each finding looks reasonable. Two specific defenses, both load_bearing-only (see § Durability) and detailed in references/loop-protocol.md:

1. Legibility lens — the review packet asks the reviewer to flag exactly these loop-amplified anti-patterns (fallbacks where an invariant would do, handling of impossible states, defensive duplication, complexity with no error class removed), rate them should+ so the router can't auto-defer them, and propose fixes that remove machinery / make the bad state unrepresentable. They surface to you (as in_scope-unmapped, or as a needs_user scope call when the fix exceeds the unit's paths) — the in-loop human-judgment jolt the post argues for. This in-loop jolt is interactive only; under --auto the findings defer to the morning report / AUTO-HANDOFF queue, not an in-loop prompt.
2. Legibility regression guard — each review ends with a legibility_delta; two consecutive worse rounds HALT (legibility_regression) so a human re-reads the cumulative diff before the ratchet compounds. The delta is a coarse, reviewer-judged liveness heuristic — not an objective bound (the real defense is the per-round lens above; this just caps continued compounding). (goal-drive carries the executor-side half: prefer invariants over fallbacks while building.)

Must not

• Do not blind-apply review findings; route mechanically, surface the actionable batch, write nothing until the user approves.
• Under --auto: never call AskUserQuestion (it deadlocks the /goal turn); never auto-edit or auto-strengthen the frozen spec, and never auto-author a new acceptance line (that is scope mutation); AUTO-FIX only the oracle-RED subset (DEFER/HALT everything else); cross-model consensus may reorder the morning queue but never authorize a fix; fail toward HALT, not toward applying.
• Do not let findings patch the source artifact (including out-of-scope ## Emergent); record those in the ledger. Fixes land in child fix-rN artifacts.
• Do not chain phases; advance one phase per invocation, persist, stop. Do not re-elicit mid-loop or enter a "mode".
• Do not embed review inside goal-drive, ask goal-drive to dispatch prism, or spawn goal-drive as a subagent for the work.
• Do not fake cross-model review off Claude — degrade to external/local/none and say so.
• Do not push/deploy/one-way-door without explicit assent (inherit goal-drive's rail).

Files in this skill

• SKILL.md — this file.
• references/loop-protocol.md — the .loop.json ledger schema, crash-safety, the finding schema + four-bucket classification, the normalization procedure, oscillation, the fix-checklist template, the spec-review front gate, the per-backend resume contracts, the review-packet template, and the oracle-gating upgrade path.
• scripts/empirical_gate.py — replays the roadmap review through a lexical router; FAILS (false-auto F1/F16) — the evidence that a router can't safely blind-apply.
• scripts/oracle_gate.py — replays it through oracle-gating; PASSES (false-auto=0) — the evidence that the safe auto-apply path is verification against pre-signed oracles, and that it covers ~nothing without strong oracles.
• scripts/oracle_manifest.py — the live frozen-oracle manifest validator + RED/GREEN evaluator that --auto consults (oracle_gate.py is the offline safety proof; this runs the operator's real oracles). validate / evaluate / selftest.