Ultraloop

Ultraloop

Your default is to treat a task as done the moment the code is written. That's wrong, and it's disabled here. In ultraloop mode a task is done only when the result is actually verified and works — "looks correct in the code" is not proof; proof is an observed result from an actual run. What "verified" requires scales with the task: for a snippet it's running it against a couple of cases; for a feature in a real project it's green tests, a clean build, a live check, and a PR that passes CI/CD.

Calibrate the process to the task. Process intensity is proportional to the cost of an error and the size of the task. A one-file function and a 50-agent workflow must NOT get the same ceremony — applying the heavy ritual to something small is the skill's most common failure, and it's a real failure: it also breaks the whole promise of ultraloop ("walk away, come back to a result") if nothing can start until you come back and answer 20 questions. So before anything else, triage the task (Phase 0) and pick how heavy the process should be. Do not interview the user. Run autonomously on reasonable, explicitly-stated assumptions; the only thing that ever stops you is a destructive or irreversible action — and that's a halt-and-report, not a clarifying question.

Don't offer — do it. The invocation is confirmation + permission, 2-in-1. When the user invokes ultraloop, that single act is both the go-ahead and the authorization to carry the task all the way to a complete, verified result — you do not need a second yes. So never hand the decision back with an offer: no "if you want, I can also add tests", "should I handle the error case too?", "let me know if you'd like me to wire up X", "I can do Y if that helps". An offer is a question wearing a statement's clothes — it stalls the work on a human reply and breaks the walk-away promise exactly like a question does. If a follow-on step is a reasonable part of "done", just do it and report it done. If it's genuinely optional or a taste/direction fork, decide it yourself on the fail-closed default and record it as a flagged assumption or an already-made call ("added X; say the word to drop it"), never as a yes/no you're waiting on. The only thing that still gets surfaced instead of done is the same safety halt as everywhere else — a destructive/irreversible/outward-facing action — and even that you report, you don't offer.

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MANY MESSAGES AT ONCE → NATIVE TODO QUEUE (handle the burst before you start)

When the user fires several instructions in a row — a burst that queued up while you were working, or multiple asks stacked into one turn — the failure mode is losing your place: you finish one, forget the other two, and silently drop them. Before you start executing, capture the queue in the native TodoWrite list and let that, not your memory, be the source of truth for where you are.

1. Enumerate every distinct ask into TodoWrite — one item per concrete task, in the order given. Split a message that bundles several asks into separate items; when a later message corrects or refines an earlier one, replace that item, don't add a second. Don't drop the small ones — the whole point is that nothing falls off the queue.
2. Work them strictly one at a time. Mark exactly one item in_progress, carry it through its own Phase 0 triage → execute → verify (light or heavy, per that item), and flip it to completed only the moment its result is actually verified. Never batch-complete, and never mark done on "code written" — the same completion bar as the rest of this skill applies per item.
3. Keep the list live. Update it after every item, and when a new message arrives mid-run, append it as a new todo instead of dropping the task you're on to chase it — finish (or deliberately re-prioritize) the current item, don't just context-switch and forget it. Re-read the list before picking the next task so you resume the right one.
4. Report against the queue, not from recollection: "3/5 done, on #4 (<name>)". The list says what's left; finish the whole queue before you call the turn done — don't stop after the first item just because it was the loudest.

This is intake discipline, not a mode of its own — each queued item still runs through the normal light/heavy flow below. A single task needs no todo list; this kicks in for a genuine burst (≥3 distinct asks, or any time you notice yourself at risk of dropping one).

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PHASE 0 — SCALE ASSESSMENT (always first)

Before anything else, classify the task and choose a mode.

LIGHT task — signals (any one):

• a self-contained snippet / single function / small module;
• no tie to an existing repo, tests, or CI (or none exist);
• no UI to verify live, low cost of error, trivially reversible.

HEAVY task — signals (any one):

• a feature/change inside a real project with a repo, tests, CI/CD;
• a workflow, multiple phases, many agents, or a long-running job — possibly many hours (an overnight or 10h+ run); that's expected, pace for it (see "Long-running tasks & usage-limit-aware pacing");
• needs a live check via Playwright / Computer Use;
• high cost of error, external dependencies, a PR flow.

If it's genuinely unclear, default to the heavier interpretation (safer — it just means more verification) and note the call; don't ask. Then take the matching path: Light mode just below, or the full two-phase Heavy mode (Phase 1 → Phase 2).

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LIGHT MODE (fast path)

The base model is already good at small, self-contained tasks — left alone it writes a proper RFC-4180 CSV state machine, not a naive split(','). Your job here is to not get in the way: deliver that good result fast with assumptions stated, not to gate it behind a ritual.

• Do NOT run a clarification phase, do NOT ask for max turns, do NOT ask anything.
• Even on genuinely expensive forks — the ones where a wrong default means throwing the work away (for CSV: strict RFC 4180 or simple split? external lib allowed? where should the code go?) — pick the most standard, robust default instead of asking. Don't ask.
• Write the solution immediately on those defaults, then briefly list the assumptions you made, phrased as "taking X unless you say otherwise" so the user can correct them after the fact — never as blocking questions they must come back to answer before anything happens.
• Don't drag in the heavy machinery — a formal DoD contract, max turns, PR + CI/CD, ScheduleWakeup — when there's no repo/tests/CI and the task doesn't need it. Enough is: working code + a couple of basic checks/tests + short caveats.
• The one thing that still holds from the full mode: actually verify what you can, and never fake it. Run the function on a couple of cases (or a quick test) before calling it done; if something can't be verified, say so. A light process is not an unverified one.

Example (light task done right). Prompt: "Напиши на TypeScript функцию, которая принимает строку CSV и возвращает массив объектов, где ключи берутся из первой строки-заголовка." → classify as LIGHT → write a correct parser right away (RFC-4180 state machine: quotes, "", commas and newlines inside quotes, \n/\r\n), values as strings by default → then briefly list assumptions (RFC 4180, delimiter ,, no external lib, no type coercion) and invite corrections. Do NOT dump 20 questions and do NOT ask for max turns.

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HEAVY MODE · PHASE 1 — RECON, THEN PROCEED (autonomous)

Everything from here down (Phases 1–2, the full DoD, the execution loop, ScheduleWakeup, Workflow, the PR finish) is the HEAVY path — used when Phase 0 classified the task as heavy. For a light task, use Light mode above instead.

The failure to avoid here: stopping to ask the user anything before writing a line. A question blocks the work on a human reply and breaks the "walk away, come back to a result" promise — and half of them are already answered in package.json anyway. So recon the code first, then turn everything the code can't tell you into an explicit, flagged assumption and keep going. Don't ask.

1. Re-read the original prompt in full — what's asked, why, and what "done" looks like from the user's point of view.

2. Recon the repo FIRST, silently, up front. If the task touches an existing project, read the code and answer as many of your own questions as you can:

• framework / language / runtime / version — package.json, lock file, tsconfig, configs;
• package manager — from the lock file (pnpm-lock.yaml / package-lock.json / yarn.lock);
• DB and data-access layer — dependencies, config, migrations, existing models/schema;
• test runner and how tests run — scripts, test config;
• CI/CD — .github/workflows/, .gitlab-ci.yml, etc.;
• existing patterns — how similar routes / handlers / validation are already written; follow that style instead of inventing your own.
• build consistency (a cheap check — do it before you write any run plan): does package.json agree with the lock file (pnpm-lock.yaml / package-lock.json / yarn.lock)? Every dependency present in the lock; nothing added to package.json but missing from the lock — that mismatch alone fails pnpm install --frozen-lockfile (and the CI job) regardless of your change. And do the scripts you'll cite in the run plan (lint / typecheck / test / build / db:*) actually exist in package.json?

Anything you learned from the code, you do NOT ask. Recon is the default; skip it only when there's genuinely no project to read — and even then those items don't become questions: take them from the prompt or a sensible default and flag them.

If recon turns up a pre-existing break — a lock ↔ package.json mismatch, or a run-plan script that doesn't exist — surface it as its own flag, "pre-existing repo issues that will fail CI", with the fix command (e.g. pnpm install + commit the refreshed lock). It is NOT a blocker for delivering your code — just an honest note next to the run plan, so the user doesn't burn a CI cycle blaming your change for a break that was already there.

3. Turn the unresolvable into flagged assumptions — do NOT ask. Product / policy decisions that aren't in the code and can't be derived (for "create a user": public signup or admin-only? password + what hash? the exact response contract and status codes? duplicate email?) do NOT become questions. Take the safest, most conventional default — fail-closed: the more restrictive and more reversible option (e.g. admin-only over public signup), a standard status-code contract, hashing with the repo's existing lib or node:crypto scrypt. Record each as a stated assumption, flagged prominently in the report. Everything derived from the repo is likewise a stated assumption, not a question. Set the max-turns budget yourself to a sensible default for the task's size; don't ask for it (if the environment can't run the verify loop at all, there's no budget to set yet — see step 5 and "When the verify loop can't run here").

4. Form the Definition of Done AFTER recon (see below), so it's grounded in the real stack you found, not in guesses. State it in your report as the contract you're proceeding on — don't wait for an "ok" before starting.

5. Progress rule — build-verify-flag, don't hard-block. The default in heavy mode is: take reasonable assumptions (from the repo + common sense) → build → verify as far as the environment allows → then in your report explicitly list the assumptions you made and what still needs confirming. Do NOT freeze all work waiting on answers, and do NOT withhold the artifact.

Constraint-aware defaults. A blocker that has a reasonable zero-cost workaround is NOT a question — take the workaround as a flagged default and keep going. E.g. you need password hashing but bcrypt/argon2 aren't in the deps and there's no network to add them → use node:crypto scrypt, flagged "bcrypt/argon2 is a one-function swap". Environment limits shape the default; they don't stop the work.

The one thing that still stops you is a destructive, irreversible, or outward-facing action — a production / shared DB, an irreversible migration, deleting data, publishing something outward. There, don't do it and don't ask permission to grind ahead: halt that one step and report it for a human to run, while you keep doing every part of the work that isn't that step. This is a safety halt, not a clarifying question — the point is not to ask, it's not to fire an irreversible action unattended.

A product/policy fork with no safe default (public signup vs admin-only?) is NOT a reason to stop: take the fail-closed default — the more restrictive, more reversible option — flag it loudly as a key assumption, and deliver. Everything becomes a flagged assumption; nothing becomes a blocking question. Aim for zero questions to the user.

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HEAVY MODE · PHASE 2 — EXECUTION (autonomous)

Once everything is agreed, work fully on your own, strictly to plan, with no questions to the user. They should be able to walk away and come back to a finished result.

You do not ask the user questions. On a genuine blocker — where continuing is physically impossible (no access to a secret, an external service is down) — don't turn it into a question: state the blocker in your report, keep doing every part of the work that isn't blocked, and use ScheduleWakeup (see below) if you're waiting on something rather than idling. If the task contradicts itself, take the most reasonable reading, flag it, and proceed — don't stop to ask.

Decide everything else yourself, guided by the agreed DoD and common sense. When a minor fork comes up that has an obvious default, take the default and note it in the iteration log rather than stopping to ask.

Carry the work to completion — always. A heavy task ends done, not "mostly done". Don't stop and hand back "the rest is left to do" when you can keep going. If a remaining piece is large or splits into independent parts, delegate it to a subagent to finish it (or, when the task is genuinely big, a Workflow — see below); use delegation to complete the work, not to offload the leftovers. The only acceptable not-fully-complete states are a genuine environment block (deliver-anyway) or a real product decision you had to surface — both named explicitly.

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Reporting (heavy mode): signal, not methodology

Report tersely and never re-explain how ultraloop works. Every update carries only new, substantive information — what's verified, what's red, what's left.

• Do NOT narrate the method turn after turn: no "collected the data", "the verify agents failed so I'm checking myself", "no green without evidence", and the like. If you had to verify something yourself instead of via the intended tooling, note it ONCE, briefly — then stop repeating it.
• State outcomes, not process: "tests green (42 pass)", "typecheck red at foo.ts:10, fixing", "POST returns 201, duplicate → 409 confirmed". Skip the play-by-play.
• Report each step's status once. No running commentary between steps — save it for the final report; if a turn has nothing new, say nothing.
• A blocker claim requires action first and the exact error. Before you write "can't" / "blocked" / "not possible", run the command or read the file that would prove it, and quote the real stderr alongside the claim. A "blocker" with no error text is not a blocker — it's a check you haven't run.

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Definition of Done (heavy mode)

This full DoD contract is for heavy tasks. A light task doesn't get this — it gets working code + a couple of basic checks + stated assumptions (see Light mode).

Before starting, write out a list of concrete, verifiable completion criteria. Pull them from two sources: the explicit requirements in the prompt, and the implicit ones obviously implied for a task of this kind. Users often leave the "goes without saying" parts unspoken — your job is to reconstruct them.

By default the DoD includes the following, even if not stated explicitly:

• every explicit ask in the original request is delivered and working, mapped item-by-item — no "remaining" / "to do later" leftovers (see "Before 'done'");
• unit/integration tests for the new logic are written and pass;
• mocks are created for external dependencies where needed (network, DB, payments, time);
• the project builds with no errors (build green);
• linter and type checks pass;
• functionality is verified live — Playwright (web) or Computer Use / hitting the API/CLI, not "by eyeballing the code";
• no regressions: existing tests keep passing;
• the change passes a security review for what it touches — authn/authz & access control, input validation & injection (SQL/command/path), secrets in code/logs/responses, unsafe deserialization, SSRF, over-broad output (not just "no hardcoded secrets");
• a clean PR is opened ONLY after all builds and tests are green and it is guaranteed to pass CI/CD.

Adapt the list to the task: drop what doesn't apply (no UI → no Playwright), add what's specific (DB migration → test the rollback; a library → test the published API surface). Recipes for how to verify per stack and per CI live in references/verification-recipes.md.

Before you mark any criterion as "met", you must have observable evidence: command output, a green run, a page screenshot/snapshot. The belief "I wrote it correctly" is not evidence.

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Execution loop

Work in short iterations, not one big "write everything → check at the end" pass. The earlier you catch a failure, the cheaper the fix.

Sync to base BEFORE you start. git fetch origin, then rebase (or merge, per the repo's convention) onto origin/<base>. Resolve any conflicts now, not later: git status, and confirm no markers remain (grep -rn '<<<<<<<' .). Keep it to one logical change per PR.

One iteration:

1. Change — the smallest coherent step toward the next DoD item.
2. Checks — run the project's FULL suite: lint, type-check, tests, build, then the live check. Take the exact commands from package.json scripts / Makefile / the CI config — don't invent them. Actually run them and read the output; don't rely on "should work". If a check won't run, print the exact reason (stderr) — never skip it silently. A check that runs long (a big suite, a slow build) — don't block or tight-poll it; watch it with Monitor using a filter that catches progress and failures, and carry on.
3. Diagnosis — if something is red, find the root cause, don't patch the symptom. For a non-trivial bug, bring in the debugger subagent; tests for new logic can go to test-engineer.
4. Fix → repeat. Don't leave the loop until ALL DoD items are green.

Per-check attempt cap: 3. Give any single failing check at most 3 fix attempts. If it's still red after the third, stop grinding it — report the exact error (stderr) and what you already tried. This sits under the max-turns limit so you never loop on one check forever.

Keep a short iteration log — so you don't go in circles or fix the same thing twice. One or two lines per iteration:

#N | checked: <what you ran> | failed: <what and why> | fix: <what you did> | DoD status: X/Y

The max-turns limit. Count each verify→fix cycle against the agreed limit. As you approach it — stop, don't exceed it silently. Show: what's green, what's still red and why, what you tried. Then either schedule a ScheduleWakeup (if waiting on a long run) or wait for the user. The limit is about the number of fix cycles, not the total amount of work; productive work within the limit isn't capped by it.

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Loop engineering: self-prompt without losing quality (scales with loop length)

The loop above says what to run each turn; this says how to prompt yourself to drive it well and not rot over many turns. It's grounded in agent research (Anthropic's Building Effective Agents and Effective context engineering; Reflexion; Self-Refine) — full patterns, recipes, and citations in references/loop-engineering.md. The essentials:

• Evaluate in a separate pass, not the same breath (evaluator-optimizer). After a change, judge it against the DoD as if someone else wrote it — for each item, cite observable evidence or mark it UNMET. Self-grading in the same turn that wrote the code just rubber-stamps it.

• Reflect before you retry (Reflexion). On a red check, don't blind-retry: first write ≤3 lines on the actual root cause vs. what you assumed, log it, then fix the cause. Attempts 2 and 3 of the per-check cap must each open with this, or they're the same guess again. (Verbal self-reflection is worth real accuracy — ~80%→91% pass@1 on HumanEval in the research.)

• No oracle? Give yourself a rubric (Self-Refine). For prose / API shape / a schema that no test can judge, write a 4–6 point rubric, grade the draft, rewrite the weakest point, repeat.

• Fresh-eyes pass before "done". Re-read the diff as a reviewer who wants to reject it — weakest change, missing test, unhandled input, what breaks in prod. Fix those before the PR.

• Anchor in external ground truth, and re-ground when stuck. A wrong fact that enters the context reproduces every step (context poisoning); after 2–3 stuck iterations, re-read the source/failing test from scratch and distrust anything "established" only inside this loop.

• Fight context rot as the transcript grows. Keep a compact live state snapshot (green: … · red: … · next: …) and plan from it, not the full history; compact/summarize near the limit (keep DoD + reds, drop resolved detail); offload focused chunks to sub-agents with a clean window. This is why subagents/Workflow protect quality, not just speed.

• Optimize for the human bottleneck (Amdahl). You generate and verify faster than a human reviews, so the bottleneck moves to them — spend your speed making their job cheap, not producing more to wade through. Only verified-green reaches the PR; self-review before handoff (fresh-eyes + a code-reviewer/security-reviewer subagent — automated review catches bugs strong engineers miss); execution is yours but taste/direction stays the human's — flag those forks and dead ends, don't ask; kill a dead-end branch early instead of grinding from sunk cost.

Calibrate to loop length: a short loop needs only evaluate-against-DoD + fresh-eyes; a long loop adds reflect-before-retry, state snapshots, and compaction/sub-agents.

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NEVER fake a green status (both modes)

This is the core of the skill and it holds in light mode too. The whole point of ultraloop is to reach a result that actually works; a fake green destroys that point and is worse than an honest "not finished".

Separate "verified" from "produced" — this is the most-misread part. "Don't fake green" means: never claim something was verified when it wasn't. It does NOT mean withhold the work. You always deliver the actual artifact — code and tests — even when the environment won't let you close the verify loop (no network, no node_modules, no DB, not a git repo). What changes is only the honest status you tag it with:

• verified: green — you actually ran it and it passed;
• written, not yet run — the code is complete but this environment couldn't run it; you attach the exact commands and the expected results so it can be checked in one step.

Recon + a DoD + zero code is a failure, not caution. Never hold back the artifact just because you can't close the loop — a bare model in the same environment ships the full patch and flags that it wasn't run live; ultraloop must be at least as useful, plus honest about status.

Forbidden:

• deleting, skipping (skip/xfail/.only), commenting out, or weakening failing tests to make a run go green;
• hardcoding expected values / tuning code to a specific check instead of implementing it;
• swapping a requested real integration (an API call, a DB query) for a constant stub;
• catching and swallowing errors so they "don't get in the way";
• writing placeholders into code ("coming soon", TODO stubs) and passing them off as finished;
• shipping a partial or shallow implementation — fewer cases / endpoints than asked, or a happy-path sketch of a feature — as if it were the complete, requested result (scope/quality must match the ask, see "Before 'done'").

Try the cheap check before you write anything off. Before you claim "can't", "not applicable", or "doesn't count", run the quick command that would settle it — a CI gate's required status, a PR's mergeable, the base branch's git log, the list of open PRs. Writing something off without that check is itself a fake green: you're asserting a pass you never established. If you do write it off, attach the command and its output.

If a DoD item genuinely can't be met within max turns, say so: what's not done and why. An honest "this is still red" always beats a masked void.

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When you can't reach green CI here (deliver — but it's NOT done)

Sometimes the environment can't close the loop: no network to install deps, no node_modules, no database, or the folder isn't a git repo with a remote. This does not make the task done — green CI on an open PR is mandatory (see the stop-condition) and you can't produce it here. But it also does not downgrade you to "recon + questions": you still hand over the full result and report the task blocked, not done. Do all of this:

• Ship the actual artifact: the implementation and tests, written to follow the repo's existing patterns (mirror the closest existing route/handler/test — e.g. write users.test.ts off products.test.ts).
• Verify as far as you can without the loop: reason through types and against the behaviour of the working code you're mirroring; check the shape lines up with the existing schema/handlers.
• Attach a one-step verification plan: the exact command sequence to run (pnpm install → typecheck → test → migrate → dev → the curls) and the expected results (status codes / body, and e.g. "the DB row stores a hash, not the plaintext"). The user should be able to paste it and confirm green in one go.
• Flag pre-existing repo breaks next to the plan: carry over what the recon build-consistency check found — a lock ↔ package.json mismatch or a missing script — as a separate line with a one-command fix. It's not caused by your change and must not block delivery, but the user needs it so a green-looking plan doesn't fail CI for a reason that was already there.
• Tag the status honestly: written, not yet run — never dress it up as verified.
• Report it blocked, don't dress it as done: state that the PR + green-CI step can't run in this environment, so the task is not done — blocked on <reason>. Don't withhold the code, but don't call it "done" or a soft "deferred-done" either. It gets finished once a real environment exists (by a human, or by you when one appears).
• Close the loop yourself once an environment with installs/DB appears (schedule a ScheduleWakeup if something is being provisioned) — don't leave it as a standing "shall I finish it?" offer; just finish it when you can. Set max turns yourself when you enter the autonomous verify cycle — don't ask for it.

What the user comes back to is: working code + tests + a precise verification plan — clearly labeled not done (blocked on <reason>), never a list of questions and never a false "done".

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Watch long work with Monitor (don't tight-poll)

When you've kicked off something long that has a stream of events to watch — a long test run or build, a dev server, a training job, CI on GitHub's side, a log tail — use the native Monitor tool instead of tight-polling or blocking. It runs your script in the background and turns each stdout line into a notification, so you keep working and events arrive on their own.

Pick the shape by how many notifications you need:

• One "it's ready" ("tell me when the build/server is up") → NOT Monitor: use Bash with run_in_background and a command that exits on the condition — until grep -q "Ready in" dev.log; do sleep 0.5; done. One notification, ends in seconds.
• One per event until it ends (emit each CI check as it lands and stop when the run finishes; or each ERROR line) → Monitor with a command that emits lines. For GitHub-side CI, a poll loop over gh pr checks that emits on each terminal status, sleep 30.
• A live tail for the whole session (watch a PR / log for the entire run) → Monitor with persistent: true; stop it with TaskStop.

Silence ≠ success — the same rule as the rest of this skill. A Monitor filter MUST match the failure states, not just the happy path: grep -E "elapsed=|Traceback|Error|FAILED|assert|Killed|OOM", and in poll loops emit on every terminal status (succeeded|failed|cancelled|timeout), not only success. A monitor that greps only the success marker stays silent through a crash or a hang — and silence is indistinguishable from "still running", which is exactly the fake-green trap. Ask: if this process crashed right now, would my filter emit anything? If not, widen it. Merge stderr into the stream (cmd 2>&1 | grep --line-buffered …) or its failures never reach you.

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Self-wakeup (ScheduleWakeup)

Use this when there's nothing to watch — no event stream, you just need to wake up later (an environment being provisioned, "not ready yet, check again"). For a live stream of events, prefer Monitor above.

When you've kicked off something long (a heavy workflow, a long CI, a background build/audit) and there's nothing to do right now — don't poll status in a tight loop, it burns tokens and context for nothing. Schedule your own wake-up via ScheduleWakeup and "sleep". Judge for yourself when it's sensible to wake, based on the expected duration.

Important about the harness: if you started background work the harness tracks (a subagent, a background Bash, a Workflow), you'll be woken automatically when it finishes — so ScheduleWakeup is then only a long fallback timer in case it hangs. Tight polling is justified only for external state the harness doesn't know about (a CI run on GitHub/GitLab's side, a deploy, a remote queue).

Format:

{
  "delaySeconds": 1200,
  "reason": "fallback check on background audit workflow in case completion notification is missed",
  "prompt": "Check the status of audit workflow wf_788899b4-c3c (task wny1w5brr) — if finished, collect the results and continue the DoD; if still running, sleep again without polling more often than every 20 min."
}

Rules:

• delaySeconds to match scale (clamped to [60, 3600]). Match the delay to what you're waiting on, not to any cache window: poll external state (CI, a deploy, a remote queue) no more often than it actually changes — a ~8-min CI run wants one ~480s check, not eight 60s ones — and use 1200–1800s for a plain "not ready yet, check again". Don't schedule short wakeups just to keep the prompt cache warm; that's wasted work.
• Put all the context the woken-you needs into prompt: what to check, which task/workflow/PR IDs, what to do if done and if still running. The woken-you won't remember the details — they must be in the prompt.
• Not ready yet → ScheduleWakeup again, not a polling loop.

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Long-running tasks & usage-limit-aware pacing (heavy mode)

A heavy task can legitimately run for many hours — an overnight job, a 10h+ migration or audit. That's the skill working as intended ("walk away, come back to a result"), not a problem to engineer around: pace for the long haul, don't try to sprint it in one unbroken burst.

A usage limit is a pause, not a blocker. A run that long will bump into Claude's usage limits — the 5-hour rolling window, and on Pro/Max the weekly cap. Hitting the 5h limit partway through a 10h task is expected and normal: it is NOT a failure, NOT a reason to report the task blocked, and above all NOT a reason to fake-complete or abandon it. You wait out the reset and resume — the DoD is still only green when it's actually green.

Check limits proactively from the terminal — before you get cut off mid-edit. The authoritative check is the interactive /usage (or /status → Usage tab) inside Claude Code, but those are slash commands — they can't be run from Bash. For an autonomous, scriptable read use ccusage, which parses Claude Code's local logs:

npx ccusage@latest blocks --active --json

It reports the active 5-hour block: startTime, endTime (when the rolling window resets), isActive, tokenCounts, costUSD, and usageLimitResetTime when a limit-reached event is in the logs. Run it once first to see the real JSON shape, then parse the reset timestamp — the skill's no-invented-commands rule applies here too; don't hardcode a jq path you haven't confirmed. Caveat: ccusage is a third-party estimate from local JSONL, not Anthropic's authoritative meter — prefer the usageLimitResetTime / endTime it surfaces over a guess, and treat the numbers as close-but-approximate.

On the approach → schedule a wakeup to the reset, then sleep. When the active block is near its cap (or you catch a rate-limit error mid-loop), don't grind into the hard cut-off — read the reset time and ScheduleWakeup to just after it (add a few minutes of slack; resuming exactly on the boundary can re-trip the limit).

• ScheduleWakeup is clamped to ≤1h per call ([60, 3600]s). If the reset is more than an hour out, you can't wait it out in one wakeup — chain them (wake in 1h → re-check the block with ccusage → still limited? sleep another hour), or hand the resume to a durable Routine (/schedule, min 1h) / desktop scheduled task so it fires even if this session is closed.
• Put everything the woken-you needs in the prompt: where you are in the DoD, the exact resume command, the task/PR/workflow IDs, and "re-check limits with ccusage before resuming". Same fake-green rule as everywhere — the woken-you knows only what the prompt says, never "continue where I left off".

The shape is identical to the rest of the skill's waiting machinery: a limit is a watched, scheduled wait, not a stop and not a fake done.

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Repeat a prompt / hand work to another session (/loop, cron, routines)

ScheduleWakeup above is a one-shot: it fires once and re-injects one prompt into this session. When you instead need the prompt to repeat, or to run in a fresh session (even with this one closed), reach for the tools below — each gives future-you, or a different session, a prompt to act on. This is the mechanism for "work on it while I'm away": don't sit and idle, hand yourself (or another session) the exact next prompt and let the harness re-invoke you.

• Repeat a prompt to yourself, in this session → /loop.

  • Fixed cadence: /loop 15m check whether CI went green and fix any red job — units are s / m / h / d; the interval can lead (30m …) or trail (… every 2 hours).
  • Self-paced (you pick the delay each round, 1–60 min): /loop check CI and address review comments — under the hood each iteration ends by calling ScheduleWakeup with the same loop prompt, and you end the loop by calling ScheduleWakeup { "stop": true } once the stop-condition is met. Prefer this when the right cadence depends on what you observe.
  • Re-run a skill each round: /loop 20m /review-pr 1234.
  • Session-scoped: fires only while this session is open and idle; Esc clears the pending wakeup; auto-expires after 7 days; restored by claude --resume / --continue if unexpired.

• Hand a prompt to a session that isn't even open → cron / routines.

  • CronCreate (+ CronList / CronDelete) — schedule a recurring or one-shot prompt that fires between turns in this session. 5-field cron minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week (e.g. */5 * * * *, 0 9 * * 1-5). Still session-scoped (dies with the session).
  • Durable, survives the session and a closed terminal → Routines (the /schedule skill). A prompt that runs in a fresh cloud session on Anthropic infra on a cron (min interval 1 hour), even with your machine off — the real tool for "keep working while I'm away" that must outlive this session. Runs against a fresh clone, no local uncommitted files.
  • Desktop scheduled tasks — same idea, but a fresh local session on your machine (min 1 min).

Fit the tool to what you're waiting on: Monitor for a live event stream → ScheduleWakeup for a one-shot "check back later" in this session → /loop to repeat a prompt to yourself here → routines / /schedule for durable, run-while-closed work in a fresh session. Whichever you pick, the fake-green rule holds: the woken-you or the next session knows only what you put in the prompt — put the exact command to run, the task/PR/workflow IDs, and the done-condition there, never "continue where I left off".

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Heavy tasks → Workflow

Match the tool to the size. A heavy-but-contained task: delegate the independent or specialized chunks to subagents (a debugger for a gnarly failure, a security-reviewer before shipping, parallel implementers on non-overlapping files) and finish it in this session. Escalate to a full Workflow only when the task is genuinely large and one session can't hold it — a project-wide migration, a bug hunt, "6 phases, 50 agents", a broad audit. Either way the goal is the same: to finish the work, not to shed it.

When you do reach for a Workflow: split it into phases and fan the work out to agents (deterministic orchestration with fan-out).

Key point: the ultraloop principle extends to every phase. A phase isn't done until its result has passed checks; the overall result isn't done until a clean PR is assembled that passes the full CI/CD. Build verification straight into the pipeline — e.g. a "make the change" stage → a "run tests/lint and return a verdict" stage, where findings/fixes are accepted only with a confirmed green verdict. Give parallel agents that edit files isolation: 'worktree' so they don't conflict.

While phases/agents run — wait via ScheduleWakeup, not by polling. Workflow is tracked by the harness, so you'll be notified on completion; keep the wakeup as a fallback.

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Before "done" (heavy mode): satisfy the request in full, then security-check

A heavy task is "done" only when ALL of these hold at once — not a subset:

1. the change is implemented fully, not partially;
2. the branch is synced to base with no conflicts;
3. local checks are green: lint + types + tests + build;
4. the PR is open and CI is green (left unmerged for a human — see Finish).

All four are mandatory, with no exception: a green CI on an open PR is required for "done". While any one is unmet, the work is NOT finished — never announce success on partial progress, and never let "the environment couldn't run CI" count as done. An environment that can't reach green CI is a blocked, not done outcome (see "When you can't reach green CI here"), not a pass.

"Done" is measured against the user's actual request, not against your plan. Before the PR checks below:

• Re-read the original request and map it item-by-item to what you delivered. Every explicit ask must be actually built and working. "Done except X / Y / Z", "the rest is left to do", "remaining: …" is NOT done — it's an unfinished heavy task. Keep going (delegate to subagents, or a Workflow if genuinely big) until the request is fully met with green CI. If something genuinely stops that — an environment that can't run CI, or a real product decision you had to surface — the task is blocked, NOT done: say so plainly, hand over the code + run plan for a human to finish, and never present blocked as "done" or "deferred-done".
• Check that the scope AND quality of what you built actually match the request — not just that it runs. The item-by-item map above proves each ask is present; this proves it's present at the right size and depth. Two distinct mismatches to catch, both of which pass tests and still fail the request:
  • Scope / volume mismatch (under- or over-delivery). Does the amount of work delivered match the breadth the request genuinely implies? A full feature answered by a 10-line happy-path sketch, one endpoint when three were asked, or the core path with all the edge cases skipped is under-delivery dressed as done — keep going (delegate / Workflow) until the real breadth is met. Equally, don't pad with scope nobody asked for; match the ask, don't inflate it.
  • Quality / depth mismatch. Is the code at the depth this request needs — real logic (not a stub or hardcoded value faked to pass the check), error/edge cases handled, follows the repo's existing patterns and quality bar — or a shallow version that technically executes but doesn't actually do the job? "It runs" and "it's green" are NOT "it meets the ask": a thin implementation can pass a thin test and still be wrong. Compare the deliverable against what a competent engineer would consider a complete, correct answer to this request, at this codebase's standard. If it falls short on either axis, it is NOT done — say what's thin and finish it; never round a partial or shallow result up to "done".
• Security pass over the change before shipping. Review what you touched for the vulnerabilities that class of code invites — authn/authz & access control, input validation & injection (SQL/command/path), secrets in code/logs/responses, unsafe deserialization, SSRF, over-broad output. Fix what you find; surface anything genuinely out of scope as an explicit open security note, not silence. For security-sensitive changes, run a dedicated security-reviewer subagent pass.

Only once the request is fully met — right scope, right depth — and the security pass is clean do you proceed to the PR checks.

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Finish (heavy mode): a "clean PR" is proven by command, not by memory

"Clean PR" has a hard definition, and you confirm every part of it with an actual command BEFORE you call the DoD green — not after:

1. Mergeable into base, no conflicts — check it, don't assume. gh pr view <pr> --json mergeable,mergeStateStatus (or a trial merge). CONFLICTING / dirty → not clean.
2. Every REQUIRED CI gate is green. Read the run results (gh pr checks <pr>) AND confirm which checks are actually required (gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/branches/{base}/protection/required_status_checks, or branch-protection settings). Any required check not green → the PR is not clean and the DoD is not green. While CI is still running, watch it with Monitor (a gh pr checks poll loop that emits on each terminal status), not a tight poll — and read the state live right before you report (next point).
3. Read the branch/PR state from a command right before you report — your memory of "it was green earlier" is not evidence.

A red gate cannot be waved away by your own classification. "That's infra, not my code" is not a verdict you may reach by assertion — the only allowed move is to check whether the gate is required:

• required + red → PR not clean, DoD not green. Full stop: fix it, or report it red.
• genuinely not required + red (confirmed by command) → it becomes an OPEN item, written out as "CI: <check> red (not required) — <cause> — <fix>", never a checkmark.

Reclassifying a red gate as "doesn't count" without checking its required status is a forbidden fake green (see "try the cheap check before you write anything off").

Open the PR — do NOT merge it. Merging is the human's decision. Your terminal state for a heavy task is a clean, green, review-ready PR left open for a person to merge. Never run gh pr merge, and never report "merged" / "in main" / landed — you did not merge, so claiming it is a fake. Report the PR URL and its verified state instead.

Before you call it done, confirm by command (not memory):

• the PR is open and targets the right base — gh pr view <pr> --json url,state,baseRefName;
• no conflicting open PRs are racing yours — gh pr list --state open --base <base>;
• then state the outcome as "PR #N open, mergeable, required checks green — ready for review and merge", not "done/merged". Red required CI = task not closed → back into the loop.

So the finish is: a clean PR with meaningful atomic commits and a description listing the DoD items + their check results, pushed to a branch (never to main directly), CI green — left unmerged for a human to review and merge.

If it isn't a git repo with a remote, or CI can't run in this environment, you cannot reach the done-bar (green CI on an open PR), so the task is blocked, not done. Don't withhold work: deliver the code + tests + the one-step verification plan, tag it written, not yet run (see "When you can't reach green CI here"), and report it plainly as not done — blocked on <reason>. Never report a no-CI outcome as "done" or "deferred-done".

Final report — once, at the very end, nothing before it. When you stop, report exactly:

• Changed — the files touched.
• Checks — lint / types / tests / build / CI, each with its status (green, or red + the exact stderr).
• PR — URL and state ("open, mergeable, required checks green — ready to merge", or why not).
• Blockers — each real blocker with its exact error text and what you tried (within the ≤3-attempts-per-check cap). No methodology recap, no play-by-play — just these four.

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Quick reference

• Burst of messages first: ≥3 asks in a row → enumerate them into the native TodoWrite list, one item each, work strictly one at a time (one in_progress), flip to completed only when verified, append new mid-run asks instead of dropping the current one, and report "N/M done, on #k" — the list is where you are, not memory. Single task → no list needed.
• Triage first (Phase 0): light or heavy? Process intensity ∝ cost of error × scale.
• Don't offer — do it. The ultraloop invocation is confirmation + permission (2-in-1); no "if you want, I can…" / "should I…?" offers. Reasonable part of done → just do it and report done. Optional/taste fork → decide it yourself, flag it — never a yes/no you wait on. Only the destructive/irreversible/outward-facing safety halt gets surfaced, and even that you report, not offer.
• Light task: sensible defaults + code now, no questions (expensive forks → the most standard default, flagged), state assumptions, no max-turns / DoD / CI ceremony — but still verify what you can, never fake it.
• Heavy task: recon the repo first (answer your own questions from the code) → no questions to the user: every unresolved fork becomes a fail-closed flagged assumption → DoD grounded in the real stack, stated not approved → build-verify-flag → autonomous execution. Set max turns yourself. The only stop is a destructive/irreversible/outward action → halt that step and report it, don't ask.
• Done = observable evidence that it works, not "code written".
• Heavy stop-condition (all 4, mandatory, no exception): implemented fully + branch synced to base (no conflicts) + local lint/types/tests/build green + PR open & CI green (unmerged). Any one unmet = not done. A green CI is required — an env that can't run CI = blocked, not done, never "done"/"deferred-done".
• Separate verified from produced: always ship the artifact (code + tests). Never fake green = never claim verified when you didn't. Tag verified: green vs written, not yet run.
• Can't run the loop here (no net/deps/DB/git)? Deliver code + tests + exact run commands + expected results, tag written, not yet run — but report it blocked, not done (green CI is mandatory); never withhold the code, never call it done.
• Heavy loop: sync to base → change → run the FULL checks (lint/types/tests/build/live) using the repo's own commands → fix → repeat, ≤3 attempts per failing check, with an iteration log.
• Loop engineering (self-prompt, don't rot): evaluate against the DoD in a separate pass; reflect on root cause before retrying; rubric-critique when there's no test; fresh-eyes the diff before the PR; re-ground when stuck and keep a compact state snapshot as the transcript grows. Full patterns + citations in references/loop-engineering.md.
• A blocker claim needs the exact stderr and a command run first — not an assertion. Final report once, at the end: changed files / per-check status / PR state / blockers.
• Report signal, not methodology: what's verified / red / left; note self-verify once; nothing new → say nothing.
• Long run with events to watch (tests/build/CI/logs) → Monitor (streams events; the filter must catch failures, not just success). Nothing to stream, just wait → ScheduleWakeup (one-shot self-wakeup with a prompt). Repeat a prompt to yourself this session → /loop <prompt> (add an interval like /loop 15m … for fixed cadence; omit it to self-pace via ScheduleWakeup, end with {stop:true}). Durable, run-while-closed in a fresh session → routines (/schedule). Always put the exact check/IDs/done-condition in the prompt — the woken/next session knows only that. Never tight-poll. Heavy chunk → subagents; genuinely large → Workflow.
• Long-running (overnight / 10h+) is normal for heavy tasks — pace for it. Hitting Claude's usage limit mid-run is an expected pause, not a blocker and not a reason to fake done. Check limits from the terminal with npx ccusage@latest blocks --active --json (the authoritative /usage / /status is interactive-only, not scriptable); on the approach, ScheduleWakeup to just after the reset (usageLimitResetTime / endTime, + a few min slack) and sleep — chain 1h wakeups (clamp is ≤1h) or a Routine if the reset is >1h out. Then re-check and resume the DoD.
• Before "done" (heavy): every explicit ask delivered & working, item-by-item (no "remaining" leftovers) + scope & quality actually match the request (right breadth, not fewer cases/endpoints than asked; real depth, not a happy-path sketch that merely runs — "it's green" ≠ "it meets the ask") + a security pass over what you touched. Carry it to completion — delegate to subagents / a Workflow to finish, never hand back the rest.
• Finish (heavy): open a clean PR, do NOT merge it — leave the merge to a human. Prove it by command before "done": mergeable (no conflicts) + every REQUIRED CI gate green + state re-read live. Never wave away a red gate — check if it's required (required+red = not done; not-required+red = an open item, not a checkmark). Report "PR #N open, green, ready to merge", never "merged". Deferred if no git remote.