Loop Engineering
20 articles in series
Twenty articles on loop engineering — the 2026 shift from one-shot prompts to closed-loop agents that run until an exit condition is met. From the Ralph technique and ship-until-green to exit-condition design, mapped to the 150+ recipes in the Loops channel.
Loop Engineering vs Prompt Engineering
A head-to-head comparison of loop engineering and prompt engineering: inputs, failure modes, cost, and exactly when to use each in 2026.
Continuous Claude: Code While You Sleep
Continuous Claude runs Claude Code in a Ralph-style loop that opens PRs, waits for CI, merges, and repeats — turning overnight hours into shipped serial changes.
Test Until Green: Self-Healing Test Loops
A step-by-step guide to building a self-healing test loop in Claude Code — run the suite, read failures, fix, repeat until green, with a paste-ready kickoff prompt.
/loop, /goal & /schedule in Claude Code
The three native loop primitives in Claude Code — /loop, /goal, and /schedule — what each does, how they differ, and when to reach for which, with examples.
Ship PR Until Green: Anatomy of a Loop
Dissect Ship PR Until Green field by field — goal, exit condition, max-iterations, check command, and the kickoff prompt that drives Claude Code to a passing PR.
The Ralph Technique, Explained
The Ralph technique runs a coding agent in a plain while-loop with fresh context each iteration. Here is why restarting beats one long session for autonomous agents.
Prompt Engineering Is Out. Loops Are In.
Why loop engineering replaced prompt engineering in 2026, and what changes for builders when the unit of work becomes an autonomous loop instead of a prompt.
What Is Loop Engineering? The 2026 Meta
Loop engineering is the 2026 successor to prompt engineering: designing autonomous agent loops that act, observe, decide, and repeat until a verifiable exit condition.