Designing an agent loop for coding

Short summary

An in-depth analysis of how to design agent loops for coding tasks, separating goal specification from verification. The author argues that collapsing goal and check into one step lets agents declare false victory, and proposes a verification ladder from self-report up to running the real product. References to SWE-Cycle and SWE-Review research support the approach of splitting implementation, review, and test generation.

• •Agent loops need separate goal definitions and verification checks
• •Verification should be a ladder: self-report, static checks, tests, real product, separate review
• •Research (SWE-Cycle, SWE-Review) confirms splitting cycle stages improves performance
• •Deterministic tests preferred over model-based verification when possible

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