ralph-loop-help

Original：🇺🇸 English

Translated

Explain the Ralph Loop plugin, how it works, and available skills. Use when the user asks for help with ralph loop, wants to understand the technique, or needs usage examples.

3installs

Sourcecursor/plugins

Added on2026-08-19

NPX Install

npx skill4agent add cursor/plugins ralph-loop-help

SKILL.md Content

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Ralph Loop Help

Trigger

The user asks what Ralph Loop is, how it works, or needs usage guidance.

What to Explain

What is Ralph Loop?

Ralph Loop implements the Ralph Wiggum technique — an iterative development methodology based on continuous AI loops, pioneered by Geoffrey Huntley.

Core concept: the same prompt is fed to the agent repeatedly. The "self-referential" aspect comes from the agent seeing its own previous work in the files and git history, not from feeding output back as input.

Each iteration:

The agent receives the SAME prompt
Works on the task, modifying files
Tries to exit
Stop hook intercepts and feeds the same prompt again
The agent sees its previous work in the files
Iteratively improves until completion

Starting a Ralph Loop

Tell the agent your task along with options:

Start a ralph loop: "Build a REST API for todos" --max-iterations 20 --completion-promise "COMPLETE"

Options:

```
--max-iterations N
```
— max iterations before auto-stop
```
--completion-promise "TEXT"
```
— phrase to signal completion

How it works:

Creates
```
.cursor/ralph/scratchpad.md
```
state file
Agent works on the task
Stop hook intercepts exit and feeds the same prompt back
Agent sees its previous work and iterates
Continues until promise detected or max iterations reached

Cancelling a Ralph Loop

Ask the agent to cancel the ralph loop. It will remove the state file and report the iteration count.

Completion Promises

To signal completion, the agent outputs a

<promise>

tag:

<promise>TASK COMPLETE</promise>

The stop hook looks for this specific tag. Without it (or

--max-iterations

), Ralph runs indefinitely.

When to Use Ralph

Good for:

Well-defined tasks with clear success criteria
Tasks requiring iteration and refinement
Iterative development with self-correction
Greenfield projects

Not good for:

Tasks requiring human judgment or design decisions
One-shot operations
Tasks with unclear success criteria

Learn More

Original technique: https://ghuntley.com/ralph/
Ralph Orchestrator: https://github.com/mikeyobrien/ralph-orchestrator

Output

Present the above information clearly to the user, tailored to their specific question.