I created a small claude skill, that helps create the "specs" for a new/existing project, it adds a /specs folder with a README, that acts as a lookup for topics/features about the app, technical approach and feature set. Once we've chatted it spawns off subagents to do research and present those findings in the specific spec. In terms of improvements there, I'd almost like a more opinionated back and forth between "pm type" agents, to help test ideas and implementation ideas.

I've got the planning and build loop setup in the claude devcontainer, which is somewhat fragile at the moment, but works for now.

In terms of chewing up context, I've noticed that depending on the size of the project the "IMPLEMENTATION_PLAN.md" can get pretty massive. If each agent run needs to parse that plan to figure out what to do next it feels like a lot of wasted parsing. I'm working on changing that implementation plan to be more granular so there is less to parse when figuring out what to do next.

Overall, it's been fun and has kept me really engaged the past week.

If you'll code a demo MVP, one-off idea, etc, alright, go ahead, have your fun and waste your tokens.

However I'll be happy when the (forced) hype fades off as people realise that there's nothing novel, insightful or even well-defined behind Ralph.

Loops have always been possible. Coordination frameworks (for tracking TODOs, spawning agents, supervising completion, etc) too, and would be better embodied as a program instead of as an ad-hoc prompt.

there’s some debate about whether this is in the spirit of the _original_ Ralph, because it keeps too much context history around. But in practice Claude Code compactions are so low-quality that it’s basically the same as clearing the history every few turns

I’ve had good luck giving it goals like “keep working until the integration test passes on GitHub CI” - that was my longest run, actually, it ran unattended for 24 hours before solving the bug

I still have a manual part which is breaking the design document down into multiple small gh issues after a review but I think that is fine for now.

Using codex exec, we start working on a github issue with a supplied design document, creating a PR on completion. Then we perform a review using a review skill madeup which is effectively just a "cite your sources" skill on the review along with Open Questions.

Then we iterate through open questions doing a minimum of 3 reviews (somewhat arbitrary but sometimes multiple reviews catch things). Then finally I have I have a step in for checking Sonarcloud, fixing them and pushing the changes. Realistically this step should be broken out into multiple iterations to avoid large context rot.

What I miss the most is output, seeing whats going on in either Codex or Claude in real time. I can output the last response but it just gets messy until I make something a bit more formal.

And it all ends with the grift of all grifts: promoting a crypto token in a nonchalant 'hey whats this??!!??' way...

It's complete garbage, and since it runs in a loop, the amount of garbage multiplies over time.

More generally, I've noticed that people who spend a lot of time interacting with LLMs sometimes develop a distinct brain-fried tone when they write or talk.

And then all these planning steps … if CC/codex interviews a ~million senior devs, next iteration of models will perhaps know how to plan way better than today?