| name | loop-discipline |
| description | Six short rules for running an autonomous loop well. Loaded at the start of any perpetual loop, watch-mode tick, or /loop dispatch. Keeps the loop's signals clean and prevents over-supervision. |
| trigger | /loop, /sprint, /work, perpetual loop, watch mode |
Loop Discipline — Six Rules
Short rules that fit in any agent's context, applied at the start of
every loop cycle and every watch-mode tick. Each one a single
sentence.
1. Read state from disk every cycle.
Don't trust what was in memory last tick — a runner may have restarted.
The bus is the truth.
2. Show the loop the world; let it decide.
Don't script every tick. Surface the current heartbeats, claims, inbox
depth, and pending findings; the loop picks the next move from that.
3. Plans expire.
If the inbox or the dependency graph moved since the plan was written,
re-plan before acting on it. A stale plan misguides quietly.
4. Disk holds state; git holds history.
Anything that must survive a restart goes through the filesystem.
Anything that must survive a rewrite goes through a commit. In-memory
caches are speed, not truth.
5. Communicate with named signals, not branching scripts.
Emit typed events (heartbeat, task_complete, finding_report,
scope_violation) and let listeners react. Long if/else chains age
badly.
6. Once the signals are good, trust the loop.
If you're auditing every cycle, you've built a script and called it a
loop. Tighten the signals; let the loop run.
How AutoClaw uses these
src/orchestratorLoop.ts (the perpetual health → work → dispatch
→ log loop) is governed by these rules./loop skill watch mode re-reads state.json each tick per rule
1.- Personas that run inside a loop (see
docs/rfc/specialized-agents.md)
cite this skill from their
## When invoked section.
- Anti-pattern guard: if a runner holds in-memory state across
dispatches, raise a
finding_report against it. Reference rule 1.
Background
These rules summarize patterns we've seen across several autonomous-loop
projects (logged in
docs/research/2026-05-22-cross-project-survey.md §2.1).
Adopt the ideas, not the borrowed vocabulary.
