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The Agentic Loop: Three loops in a trench coat

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Re: The Agentic Loop: Three loops in a trench coat

#31

Post by gwerbin »

jamestimmins wrote: post #8
swyx wrote: post #7

there are more than 3: https://www.latent.space/p/loopcraft

The issue I have with loops is that for truly complex work, where I care about building a generalized solution for a complex problem, the agents frequently reward hack and end up burning indefinitely without finishing until I step in. Curious how you're addressing this

Even with Claude Code and Opus I genuinely don't understand how people are actually doing productive things with these loops. Unmanaged by humans, these things go deep, deep into their own pits of internal domain language, depth-first development, and tail-chasing. The stuff that I've seen at work produced by people exploring these kinds of "meta loop" approaches typically have a high ratio of slop and fluff to useful code and documentation.

(I haven't tried Fable yet, but people have been writing about this stuff long before Fable came out so that shouldn't count.)

It makes sense for something like autoresearch because you're trying to exhaustively explore a space that would be impossible for a human to explore by hand. But for something like building the software to run a business, there's absolutely no way I would trust anything like this. It's ultimately just superpowered vibecoding, giving you the ability to churn out more slop faster, not build useful things faster.

Show me one example of a successful application developed using this kind of meta-meta-loop architecture. Supposedly Claude Code itself is entirely AI generated code, but it's not a `while` loop, it still has a team of designers and developers.

(Also this meta-loop stuff is different from the tactical-level Ralph Wiggum loop stuff. That's a strategy to make smaller/weaker LLMs perform like better LLMs, using say 5x more tokens but at 1/10 the cost per token so that the cost-benefit math works out.)

Re: The Agentic Loop: Three loops in a trench coat

#32

Post by gwerbin »

cheschire wrote: post #25
solumunus wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is describing how agents work. You can either read it only to gain that understanding, or read it because you’re trying to build your own version of Claude Code. “How can we use these loops in Claude Code?” doesn’t make any sense.

Oh, interesting. So am I understanding correctly then that the tools that come with monthly subscriptions are inherently limited and unable to expand to what the article describes in the outermost loops?

Depending on what kind of "loop" you're talking about, the answer is yes or no depending on the harness.

For example Claude Code already has some relatively sophisticated features for managing automated loops of doing stuff (and really don't overcomplicate it -- a loop is just doing something over and over). And there's the meme of running `while true ; do claude https://claude.com/plugins/ralph-loop.

So yes by default Claude Code doesn't include some kind of 5-layer meta-hyper-meta-looper thing. But that's not what the article is about anyway... it's just describing how agent harnesses work and how humans typically interact with them, without using that layered meta-looping stuff.

Re: The Agentic Loop: Three loops in a trench coat

#33

Post by DonHopkins »

BeetleB wrote: post #17
DonHopkins wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutely correct. It's an i18n/l10n issue. They spin in the opposite direction in the other hemisphere.

Not true. This is a common LLM hallucination. See https://www.britannica.com/story/do-toilets-in-different-hem...

Of course they hallucinate. They are spinning backwards!

Re: The Agentic Loop: Three loops in a trench coat

#35

Post by cheschire »

nickthegreek wrote: post #34
cheschire wrote: post #19

Anyone have suggestions on implementing loops with a basic $20/mo subscription to claude or gemini? Any blog posts recommended?

hermes agent

I appreciate you seeing through my confusion and giving me a concrete response.

Re: The Agentic Loop: Three loops in a trench coat

#36

Post by cheschire »

mpalmer wrote: post #28
cheschire wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, interesting. So am I understanding correctly then that the tools that come with monthly subscriptions are inherently limited and unable to expand to what the article describes in the outermost loops?

You should just read more about this stuff and try using it. The high-level questions you are asking suggest you don't yet have a great base-level understanding of the concepts.

So going allllll the way back up to my original message where I asked for more resources to read… yeah I think you might be onto something.

Re: The Agentic Loop: Three loops in a trench coat

#37

Post by killix »

gwerbin wrote: post #32
cheschire wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, interesting. So am I understanding correctly then that the tools that come with monthly subscriptions are inherently limited and unable to expand to what the article describes in the outermost loops?

Depending on what kind of "loop" you're talking about, the answer is yes or no depending on the harness. For example Claude Code already has some relatively sophisticated features for managing automated loops of doing stuff (and really don't overcomplicate it -- a loop is just doing something over and over). And there's the meme of running `while true ; do claude https://claude.com/plugins/ralph-loop . So yes by defa…

[flagged]

Re: The Agentic Loop: Three loops in a trench coat

#38

Post by cheschire »

gwerbin wrote: post #32
cheschire wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, interesting. So am I understanding correctly then that the tools that come with monthly subscriptions are inherently limited and unable to expand to what the article describes in the outermost loops?

Depending on what kind of "loop" you're talking about, the answer is yes or no depending on the harness. For example Claude Code already has some relatively sophisticated features for managing automated loops of doing stuff (and really don't overcomplicate it -- a loop is just doing something over and over). And there's the meme of running `while true ; do claude https://claude.com/plugins/ralph-loop . So yes by defa…

I must have taken the article too literally. Thanks for taking the time to help me understand.

It’s also hard to tell what’s a joke these days surrounding a lot of AI “best practices” and what’s a legitimate idea worth exploring.

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