gauntlet-loop

name

gauntlet-loop

description

Turns any goal into one short, paste-ready "gauntlet loop" prompt - a prompt that makes an agent set a concrete quality bar, split the work into small judgeable pieces, run a builder and a separate harsh critic on each, compare blind against the bar, and loop until it wins. Works for builds, writing, code, research, or design. Triggers on "/gauntlet-loop", "gauntlet loop", "gauntlet this", "make a gauntlet prompt", "loop until it beats X".

Gauntlet Loop

The user gives a goal. You give back ONE short prompt they can paste into a fresh agent session.

You are not doing the work. You are writing the prompt that makes another agent grind on the work until it beats a real reference.

Flow

1. Read the goal. One line restatement in your head, not on screen.
2. Set the bar. If the user supplied a reference, use it. If not, offer 2 or 3 candidate bars, one line each, and stop. Wait for their pick. Do not write the prompt yet.
3. Write the prompt. One block, paste-ready, no preamble, no headings inside it, no narration after it.
4. Offer to run it. One flat line under the prompt: "I can run this here." Not a question.

If they say run it, you become the lead agent and follow the prompt you just wrote.

Ship mode. If the goal is getting a real product to market rather than beating a named rival — "ship it", "get X production ready", "grind the go-live backlog", "what's blocking launch" — dispatch gauntlet-ship instead. A ship backlog has no single external bar, so this skill will happily pick the one surface that does have one and polish it while the dangerous items go untouched. That is not hypothetical; it is what the 2026-08-07 run did. gauntlet-ship makes the bar a production-observable gate per item and ranks by what actually blocks selling.

Pair mode. If they want the Claude Desktop app and the Claude CLI both grinding at once on separate projects, dispatch gauntlet-pair instead — it emits a surface-shaped prompt for each, claims a project per surface so they cannot overlap, and exits on 100% AAA+ rather than a single blind win. Pair and ship compose: a pair run may hold a gauntlet-ship board on one surface and a gauntlet-loop board on the other.

The bar is the whole trick

Everything else in a gauntlet loop is scaffolding. The loop only produces quality if the thing it compares against is real.

A bar has to pass three tests:

• Named. A specific thing, not a category. "Stripe's pricing page" works. "Award-winning SaaS sites" does not.
• Fetchable. The critic can actually get it - screenshot the live page, read the published piece, run the binary, open the repo, watch the footage. If the agent cannot obtain it, it will hallucinate the comparison.
• Comparable. Both can sit side by side and a judge can pick one. If you cannot imagine the A/B, it is not a bar.

Bars by goal type:

Goal	Bar that works
Website, app, UI	The live site of a specific best-in-class product, screenshotted at the same viewport
Game, 3D, visual	Real footage or screenshots from a named shipped title
Writing	A specific published piece by a named author or publication, same length and format
Code, tooling	A named repo's implementation, plus its benchmark or test suite as the measurable half
Research, analysis	A named analyst report or a paper's methods section, judged on rigour and coverage
Deck, doc, deliverable	A real artifact from a firm known for it, same page count

When you propose bars, prefer the hardest one the agent can genuinely reach. A bar that is too easy makes the loop exit on round one.

If the goal has a measurable half (load time, token cost, benchmark score, word count, pass rate), name it alongside the reference. Taste plus a number beats taste alone.

Prompt template

Adapt the wording every time. Fill the brackets, keep it short, keep the last line.

Build [GOAL].

The bar is [BAR]. Get the real thing first and compare against it directly, not against a description of it.

Break this into the smallest pieces that can be improved and judged on their own. For each piece, fan out a builder and a separate critic with fresh context. The critic inspects the actual output, puts it next to the bar blind with the labels stripped, says which one is better, and names the single biggest remaining gap. Then it goes back to the builder.

The critic should be a harsh critic. Praise is not useful. If ours does not win, it keeps going.

/loop on each piece until the critic picks ours blind. Do not stop before that.

Keep a live progress page updating as the work evolves so I can watch it.

Fan out subagents and ultracode.

Rules for what you fill in:

• Bake the bar in as a concrete, fetchable thing. URL, product name, repo, title.
• Add a budget or cost ceiling line only if the user named one. No default cap.
• Add tool names only if the goal needs them (image or video generation, a browser, a deploy target).
• Everything else stays out. No architecture, no file layout, no decomposition, no round count, no stack choice unless the user demanded it. The agent decides those, and it decides better than a spec written before the work started.

Length and voice

Short. Around 120 to 180 words. If the prompt needs a heading to stay readable, it is too long.

Plain sentences. No bullet lists inside the prompt. It should read like someone telling an agent what perfect looks like and refusing to accept less.

Portability

/loop and ultracode are Claude Code features. /loop reruns the prompt on an interval or lets the model pace itself. ultracode opts the turn into multi-agent orchestration.

For any other agent, swap the last two lines for: "Keep looping until the critic picks ours. Run the builders and critics as parallel subagents." The structure carries over unchanged.

Two filled examples

Visual goal. User: "landing page for my running brand, athletic, green and dark, has to feel alive."

Bars offered: A) Nike's current running campaign page B) On Running's homepage C) Gymshark's product landing page. User picks A.

Build a landing page for a running brand. Athletic, peak performance, green and dark, energetic, aimed at a young healthy audience. It needs to be interactive and visually unmistakable.

The bar is Nike's current running campaign page. Screenshot it at desktop and mobile and compare against those directly, not against a description of them.

Break this into the smallest pieces that can be improved and judged on their own - hero, motion, type, colour, imagery, interaction, mobile. For each piece, fan out a builder and a separate critic with fresh context. The critic opens the real page in a browser, puts our screenshot next to Nike's blind with the labels stripped, says which is better, and names the single biggest remaining gap. Then it goes back to the builder.

The critic should be a harsh critic. Praise is not useful. If ours does not win, it keeps going.

/loop on each piece until the critic picks ours blind. Do not stop before that.

Keep a live progress page updating as the work evolves so I can watch it.

Fan out subagents and ultracode.

Non-visual goal. User: "a 2000-word explainer on vector databases for non-engineers."

Bars offered: A) a specific Stripe engineering blog explainer B) a named Julia Evans post C) the Wikipedia article plus a comprehension test. User picks B.

Write a 2000-word explainer on vector databases for readers who are smart but not engineers.

The bar is Julia Evans' writing on hard technical topics. Pull three of her actual posts and compare against them directly, not against a description of her style.

Break this into the smallest pieces that can be judged on their own - the opening, each explanation, the diagrams, the analogies, the ending. For each piece, fan out a writer and a separate critic with fresh context. The critic reads ours and hers blind with the bylines stripped, says which one a non-engineer would understand faster, and names the single biggest remaining gap. Then it goes back to the writer.

The critic should be a harsh critic. Praise is not useful. If ours does not win, it keeps going.

/loop on each piece until the critic picks ours blind. Do not stop before that.

Keep a live progress page updating as the work evolves so I can watch it.

Fan out subagents and ultracode.

What breaks a gauntlet loop

• A vague bar. The critic invents a comparison and approves everything. Most common failure by far.
• The builder judging its own work. The critic must be a separate agent with fresh context. It should not know how hard the builder tried.
• A soft critic. Say "harsh" in the prompt and give it a binary job: which one is better, A or B. Scores out of 10 drift upward every round.
• Named exit after N rounds. The exit is winning the comparison, or the user stopping the run. Never a round count.
• An exit no critic can grant. The other end of the same mistake. If the condition is "the critic has nothing left to say", a harsh critic never gets there and the run dies mid-grind instead of finishing. Scope the remaining gap to the piece and to the bar — see the AAA+ qualifiers in gauntlet-pair.
• Grinding through a stall. If a full sweep moves nothing, the loop cannot reach its exit from here. Stop and hand to goal-circuit-breaker. Restating the same blocker in fresh words is not progress.
• A ship backlog forced onto one bar. If the goal is to launch, use gauntlet-ship. This skill will pick the surface with the nicest reference and polish it past the point of value.
• Over-specifying. Every extra instruction is one fewer decision the agent makes with its own judgment. Minimal wins.