loop-discipline

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.

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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.