Harness Ralph Loop

Iterative-loop orchestrator for [ralph]-marked Plans.md tasks. Spawns a fresh harness:ralph-worker subagent per attempt inside a single persistent worktree, runs the Verify command authoritatively, and loops until both the <promise> text tag and verify exit 0 agree.

Quick Reference

Subcommand / Argument	Behavior
help	Print usage, philosophy, and link to prompt-best-practices.md
<task-id>	Run the loop for a Plans.md task that has [ralph] marker
--max-iter N	Override MaxIter (default: 10)
--verify CMD	Override the Verify command from the task

Execution Flow

See references/loop-flow.md for the complete orchestrator pseudocode.

Summary: On iteration 0 the orchestrator spawns a ralph-worker with isolation="worktree" to create the persistent worktree, capturing RALPH_WORKTREE from result.worktreePath. For iterations 1..N it fetches the EnterWorktree deferred-tool schema via ToolSearch, calls EnterWorktree(path=RALPH_WORKTREE), then spawns the next worker without the isolation param. After each iteration the orchestrator runs the Verify command itself (anti-tamper), compares the exit code against ralph-worker-report.v1.verify.exit_code, scans the final assistant message for <promise>…</promise>, and diffs the worktree to detect stuck iterations. The loop terminates on success or on any of the three hard-stop failure modes (FT-RALPH-01 STUCK, FT-RALPH-02 VERIFY-MISMATCH, FT-RALPH-03 MAX-ITER).

Help Subcommand

Running harness-ralph-loop help prints the following:

1. Overview — harness-ralph-loop is an iterative-loop orchestrator that spawns a fresh ralph-worker subagent per attempt inside a single persistent worktree, runs the Verify command authoritatively, and loops until both the <promise> text tag and verify exit 0 agree.

2. Philosophy bullets:

   • Iteration > Perfection — let the loop refine; don't aim for perfect on the first try
   • Failures Are Data — deterministically bad means tunable; each failure leaves context
   • Operator Skill Matters — prompt quality is the primary lever, not model strength
   • Persistence Wins — keep trying; the loop handles retry logic automatically

3. Prompt guidance pointer: For full prompt-writing guidance see prompt-best-practices.md

4. Task-pattern fit pointer: For task-pattern fit see when-to-ralph.md

When to Use Ralph

See references/when-to-ralph.md for guidance on which tasks are Ralph-suitable and which are not.

Reference Files

File	Purpose
references/loop-flow.md	Full orchestrator pseudocode, prompt template, decision matrix, terminal-state handling
references/when-to-ralph.md	When to use Ralph (task patterns, DoD quality checks)
references/prompt-best-practices.md	Prompt writing best practices (A1–A4), philosophy bullets, learn-more links

Related Skills and Agents

• harness-plan — Emits [ralph] marker + Verify: line for suitable tasks
• harness-work — Detects [ralph] marker and routes to this skill
• harness:ralph-worker — The per-iteration worker agent this skill dispatches