run-a-self-refining-loop

name

run-a-self-refining-loop

description

Use when a role has substantial repeated work one session can't finish (enriching hundreds of records, grinding a backlog, sweeping a large catalogue) AND the work keeps teaching you how to do it better. Covers the tick shape, the separate state files, idempotency, queue-learnings-apply-next-tick, and the rules that keep a self-modifying loop safe. The deep end of run-a-role-agent; don't reach for it for one-offs or fixed procedures.

Run a self-refining loop (an agent that works through a backlog and tunes itself)

The deep end of [[run-a-role-agent]]. Reach for this when a role has substantial repeated work, more than one session can finish: enriching a few hundred records, working through a backlog, sweeping a large catalogue. The loop processes a slice each tick and, over days, improves its own procedure from what it learns. It runs on plain Claude Code: /loop (the rerun-a-prompt-on-an-interval command) or a cron is the heartbeat, and sub-task agents do the batches. No cloud, no extra tooling.

Don't reach for it for one-off tasks, work that should be human-paced (a decision conversation), or a job whose procedure is already known and won't change. That's just [[run-a-role-agent]] with a cadence. This pattern earns its extra moving parts only when there's a real cohort to grind through and the work keeps teaching you how to do it better.

The files it keeps

In the role's .jez/, a few files at different rhythms. Keeping them separate is the point: each changes at its own pace instead of churning one fat file.

File	Holds	Changes
loop.md	the procedure (the tick steps below)	slowly, via the Refine step
state.md	cursor, in-flight batch, today's count, queued learnings, pause flag	every tick
reflections/YYYY-MM-DD.md	append-only log of what each meaningful tick did and changed	the ticks that did something
contract.md	the prompt you hand sub-task agents (only if the loop spawns them)	slowly, via Refine

The loop reads and rewrites state.md every tick, so keep it small and parse-stable. A minimal one:

paused: false
cursor: 0              # bookmark into the backlog
done_count: 0          # items finished, all-time
today: { date: 2026-06-09, count: 0, errors_in_a_row: 0 }
in_flight: []          # the batch dispatched last tick; empty = idle
queued_learnings: []   # noticed last tick, applied THIS tick at Refine

The cursor is only a bookmark, not the truth of what's done. Each tick should re-derive "already finished" from a durable mark on the item itself, a checked: <date> field, a moved file, a status, so a re-run after a crash can't double-process or skip. That idempotency is what makes the loop safe to restart, and it's the one thing a backlog grinder must get right.

The tick

Each fire runs the same short procedure:

1. Glance — read state.md; if the pause flag is set, exit.
2. Still running? — if last tick's batch is in flight, exit clean. Don't pile on.
3. Refine — the learnings already sitting in queued_learnings (put there a tick ago) get applied to loop.md/contract.md now, then cleared; note the change in today's reflection. (Why a tick old, not fresh, is below.)
4. Process results — last batch finished? File its outputs, advance the cursor.
5. Check stops — daily cap hit, cursor exhausted, or too many errors in a row? Exit.
6. Do the next slice — pick the next few items; do them inline, or spawn sub-task agents.
7. Capture learnings — anything that surprised you this tick, add to queued_learnings for the next Refine to apply (not now, that's the review window).
8. Write state — cursor, in-flight, count, queued learnings, pause flag. Then the cron fires the next tick.

The rules that earned their place

Each of these is here because skipping it broke a real loop.

• Most ticks are no-ops. A 15-minute cron is a heartbeat, not a workload. The honest tick is usually "still running, exit" or "nothing to do, exit." Never invent work to fill a fire.
• Queue learnings, apply them next tick. The gap between noticing something and changing the procedure is your review window: you (or a glance at the reflection log) can veto a bad idea before it's baked in. Same-tick self-editing has no such window and drifts.
• Bound what the loop may change. It may edit its own loop.md and contract.md. It may not touch the rest of the workspace, other roles, or the cadence itself (that stays your call). Write the boundary into loop.md so a future session can see what it's allowed to do.
• First tick is light. If you start the loop inside a busy session, don't immediately spawn a batch on top of all that context. Let the first fire just validate state and exit; the first real batch runs from the next cron, in a clean session.
• Cap the day, pause on errors. A hard "N items per day" cap and an "auto-pause after 3 errors in a row" rule bound the cost when something upstream breaks. A degraded tool means stop, not retry 100 times.
• The reflection log is the audit trail. Read this morning's reflection before trusting the loop. It's where you see what the procedure changed and, if it drifted somewhere odd, exactly which tick to roll back. Log the ticks that did something (a batch, a Refine, a stop), not every no-op heartbeat, or the signal drowns.

If it spawns sub-task agents

Two failure modes are worth designing against up front, because both are quiet:

• Hard checkpoints, not soft bounds. "Try to stay under ~25 steps" is advisory and gets ignored, agents pull a thread and run out of room before writing anything down. Make it structural: "by step 10, write what you've confirmed so far; by step 20, write your notes and return." Now checkpointing is unavoidable.
• No interim narration. A sub-task agent that says "Done with that, now starting the next part..." mid-run can read as finished and get cut off early. Tell it plainly in the contract: do the work, narrate nothing, return one summary at the end.

Standing it up

1. Name the cohort and the stop condition. What's being processed, and when is it done (or when does it shift to a lighter "keep it fresh" mode)?
2. Write a starter loop.md from the tick above, and a state.md with the cursor, caps, and pause flag.
3. If it uses sub-task agents, write contract.md with the checkpoints and the no-narration rule.
4. Run it session-bound first (/loop). Watch the first handful of ticks and read the reflections before you let it run unattended. If it drifts, pause and adjust, that's cheaper than discovering it a hundred ticks later.

Promoting a loop to run across machines, or coordinating several at once, is a layer on top, not part of the loop. The loop itself is just this: a folder with a procedure, a little state, a daily reflection, and a heartbeat.