I recently came across Chris Parsons' "Your Agent Orchestrator is Too Clever" which talks about Ralph loops, initially proposed by Geoffrey Huntley.

  while :; do cat PROMPT.md | claude-code ; done
  
  Tried it on a real project. Realized that single line, even though concise, doesn't handle real-world complexity - multiple repos, git history, build failures. So I built some tooling around it.

  Didn't check if something already exists. Just built what I needed. Figured others might have the same needs.

  - YAML config: repo paths, git settings, permissions. No hardcoding.
  - Task routing: B* tasks go to backend, F* to frontend. AI works in the right directory.
  - Auto-commits per task group: commits when moving from F1 to F2, not after every subtask.
  - Verification: runs build/typecheck after each task. Fails? Loop stops or retries.
  - Hooks: lint after task, test after group, notify on complete.
  - Retry on failure: AI sometimes fails first try.
  - Context files: pass coding standards to every iteration.

  Core is still a bash loop. State in files. Each iteration: read state, do one task, update state, stop. Repeat.

  Example project included. Would welcome any feedback.

  https://github.com/cvemprala/ralph-addons