loop-review

name	loop-review
description	Audit and harden an EXISTING agentic-loop prompt or harness against loop-engineering best practices. Use this whenever the user has an agent/loop iterative/autonomous prompt and wants it reviewed, critiqued, scored, or made more reliable — or when they describe loop misbehavior and want to know why: "my agent runs forever / never stops", "it quits too early", "it says it's done but it isn't", "it keeps redoing the same thing", "it forgets progress after a restart", "it edits the tests to pass", "review/improve my iterative agent prompt", "why is my loop flaky". It produces a scored report — critical gaps first, each with a concrete fix — and can rewrite the prompt to close them. Exclude one-shot chatbot/system prompts. If symptoms belong to a completed run or run artifacts, loop-retro diagnoses first. Whole-harness audits are led here even when criteria are the suspected defect. This skill also owns maintenance audits of this six-skill router.
metadata	{"version":"4.1.0"}

Loop Review

Audit an existing loop prompt or harness and tell the user exactly where it will break and how to fix it. The job is diagnosis + concrete fixes, not a vague "looks good." Most loop pathologies map to a specific missing piece — find it.

Write the report in the user's language; reasoning in English.

Inputs

Get the artifact to review: the loop prompt / system prompt / harness (paste, file path, or repo). If the user describes a symptom instead, the symptom map below points straight at the likely gap. If they have a SPEC or success criteria, read those too — a loop that doesn't match its spec is itself a finding.

How to audit

Run the artifact against the shared checklist in ../loop-engineering/references/checklist.md (the same seven dimensions loop-engineering builds to). For each item, decide pass / gap / N/A, and for each gap note the exact missing thing and a one-line fix. Mark conditional items N/A with evidence; do not penalize a one-session L1 loop for machinery it does not need. Read ../loop-engineering/references/principles.md if you need the "why" behind a dimension.

Also parse its component manifest against ../loop-engineering/references/component-catalog.md: flag a missing triggered component, an included component with no trigger, a selected component with no reachable runtime clause or emitted evidence (dead), an unmet dependency, or an acceptance check that is only promised rather than exercised. Audit PROFILE, RULES, DEVIATIONS, and EXPLAIN explicitly when present or triggered, using their direct leaves in ../loop-engineering/assets/components/. Missing structured evidence makes the applicable acceptance check a gap, not a pass. For L2/L3, prompt-only safety is a critical gap unless environment enforcement evidence is supplied.

When FLOW, shared/team memory, provider controls, or host session commands are present, also audit ../loop-engineering/references/runtime-adapters.md and the runtime contract. Flag parallel side effects, missing/changed authority context, unhashed control interfaces, obsolete assistant prefill, stale model capability snapshots, and unverified /fork or /subtask semantics. For shared/team L2/L3, cross-namespace memory or credential access is a critical gap.

Be a tough but fair reviewer:

• Critical gaps first. The items that cause runaway, drift, or fake success (no hard cap, no verifiable criteria, no externalized state, no real verification, no anti-reward-hacking guardrail). Any one of these means "not ready."
• Then non-critical gaps, ranked by impact. Don't bury the big fix under nits.
• Then what it already does well — so the user knows what not to touch (surgical changes only).
• Quote the prompt when pointing at a problem; concrete beats abstract.

Symptom → likely gap

Use this to go straight to the cause when the user reports a behavior:

Symptom	Likely missing piece	Dimension
Runs forever / never stops	No hard cap; no verifiable "done"	B, A
Quits too early / gives up	"Blocked" not defined, or criteria too vague to confirm done	B, A
"Done" but it isn't	Verification not mandatory/real; criteria not verifiable	G, A
Repeats the same failed action	No "stuck" detection; no hypothesis/progress log	B, D
Forgets progress after restart	State not externalized to files	D
Edits tests / weakens checks to pass	No anti-reward-hacking guardrail; goal not protected	G, D
Tries to do everything at once	No "one increment per iteration" rule	C
Slows down / loses the thread over time	No context discipline / compaction / notes	E
Picks the wrong next thing	No Orient step / no prioritized task list	C, D
Parallel workers overwrite or double-send	Side effects placed in a parallel group	F, D
Another channel sees prior memory	State/connector not bound to authority context	D, I
Same model scores change after tool swap	Control interface omitted from eval identity	G, F

Output

A LOOP-REVIEW.md (or inline report) with:

1. Verdict — ready / not ready, and the headline reason.
2. Score — critical gap count + total gap count (from the checklist).
3. Critical gaps — each: what's missing, why it bites, the one-line fix.
4. Other gaps — ranked by impact.
5. Strengths — what's already good; leave it alone.

Then offer to apply the fixes: rewrite the prompt closing the gaps (using the loop-engineering template), changing only what the findings require — don't gold-plate a prompt that's mostly fine. When applying fixes, snapshot the original, change one conceptual component at a time, and compare representative runs so you can tell which change helped. Do not replace the whole harness merely to make it look more systematic.