loop-engineering

Loop Engineering

Loop engineering is replacing yourself as the person who prompts the agent. You design the system that does it instead.

For developers using Grok, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and other AI coding agents.

A loop is a recursive goal: you define a purpose and the AI iterates (often with sub-agents, verification, and external state) until the goal is complete or the loop decides to hand off to you.

→ Interactive showcase + pattern picker
→ Loop Engineering essay (Substack)
Canonical essay by Addy Osmani

Contents

• Quick Links
• Why This Matters
• The Five Building Blocks + Memory
• Patterns
• Getting Started (5 minutes)
• Examples by Tool
• Operating & Safety
• Caveats
• Contributing
• Sources
• License

Quick Links

Start here	Description
Loop Engineering essay	The concept, primitives, and Grok mapping — read this first
Pattern Picker	Which loop to run first — start here if unsure
Primitives Matrix	Grok vs Claude Code vs Codex — bookmark this
Loop Design Checklist	Ship readiness rubric
Patterns	7 production patterns + interactive picker
Starters	Clone-and-run kits (Grok, Claude Code, Codex)
loop-audit	Loop Readiness Score CLI (v1.4 + activity detection) — npx @cobusgreyling/loop-audit . --suggest
loop-init	Scaffold starters + budget/run-log (v1.2) — npx @cobusgreyling/loop-init . --pattern daily-triage --tool grok
loop-cost	Token spend estimator — npx @cobusgreyling/loop-cost
Stories	Real wins and honest failures

Why This Matters

Peter Steinberger:

“You shouldn’t be prompting coding agents anymore. You should be designing loops that prompt your agents.”

Boris Cherny (Head of Claude Code at Anthropic):

“I don’t prompt Claude anymore. I have loops running that prompt Claude and figuring out what to do. My job is to write loops.”

The leverage point has moved from crafting individual prompts to designing the control systems that orchestrate agents over time.

The Five Building Blocks + Memory