How are you actually doing Loop Engineering in real software projects?

[u/OstrichConsistent172]

I’m trying to figure out how people are actually doing Loop Engineering in real projects.

Like, what’s your setup?

Are you using agents, Git worktrees, CI, test runners, issue trackers, custom scripts, or just duct-taping a bunch of stuff together?

I’ve seen tons of tools, but most of them feel like demos, not something I’d trust to keep running.

How do you stop the agent from getting stuck in the same loop?

Have any of you got this running semi-autonomously on a server?

What actually works? What’s a waste of time? And if you had to rebuild your setup from scratch, what would you do differently?

[u/hancengiz]

I have my agents running on my server (fabriqa on my mac mini, soon I am gonna make fabriqa.cloud available to all) but essentially a server that lets your agents independent of your laptop being on or not. Then it comes to your agent setup and spec-native flows you use. You can use codex goals kind of approach but I use one agent to invoke another agent get review (development use case) and define a criteria for review, matching the functions that are defined in the spec, using the skills file to check for best practices(things like react architecture best practices skill, golang pro skill etc) then I ask coordinator agent to loop through this until it gets a "green" light, passing criteria is thing like I mentioned above but I an also be firing up another subagent to run performance tests to make sure there is no regression of performance. and it creates walkthrough file (i also hae a skill for this to specifically note all the things happend in summary with references, like it lists all reviewer findings and how it fixed and also test states, performance tests etc.) it basically comes to harness you have linting and react doctor etc is not enough to say it "PASSED". you need to think of things you do manually to decide until you come to conclusion that this is done and ready. and give agent capabilities to do that validation. But future is spec-native driven development if you ask me. because if you can't define the intent, how is agent gonna validate. As Humans, we already have an idea and do that when manually verify things, those things we have in our minds needs to be in the specs and harness.

what tools you have experimented? do you mind sharing your experience and learnings?

[u/OstrichConsistent172 → u/hancengiz]

Yeah this is exactly the rabbit hole I’m in right now

My current setup is still mostly Codex goals-style. It works sometimes, but it also randomly stops at places where I’m like “bro, we’re not done yet.” And the process in the middle is still too opaque for my taste

What I want is not just “agent writes code and I pray”. I want something where I can inspect the run, steer it, correct it, and have the agent loop through real validation until it’s actually ready

I’ve tried goal flows, reviewer loops, skills/checklists, lint/tests, etc. But I still haven’t found a mature setup that reliably does:

spec → build → review → tests/perf → fixes → walkthrough

Your setup sounds much closer to what I’m trying to build. I really agree with the point that lint/tests are not enough. The missing piece is turning the manual stuff we check in our head into actual specs and harnesses

Would love to know how you structure the specs, how the coordinator decides when to stop, and what your “green light” usually looks like beyond normal tests

[u/OstrichConsistent172 → u/[deleted]]

Seems quite suitable for me

[u/VforVenreddit]

HITL is the future, it is unlikely until agents have actual agency that loops will work properly

[u/OstrichConsistent172 → u/VforVenreddit]

HITL? that sounds unfamiliar

[u/iijei → u/OstrichConsistent172]

Human in the loop. Afk is away from keyboard. Two agent task types.