/loopify — Set up an agent loop skill

/loopify — Set up an agent loop

Wizard for going from "this task should run periodically" to a working loop with the right pacing, idempotency, and bail-out. Reference (Claude Code): ScheduleWakeup (dynamic pacing), CronCreate (fixed schedule), and the built-in /loop (dynamic self-paced re-entry). Other hosts: see "On hosts other than Claude Code" in Step 4.

Step 0 — Confirm what you're looping

Ask if not obvious from context: "What task should this loop do each iteration?"

Then get the essentials:

Question	Why it matters
How often?	Determines cron vs dynamic vs one-shot
When to stop?	Bail-out condition — loops must have one
What's the loop body doing?	Determines idempotency requirements
Where does output go?	File / notification / commit / nothing
What's the failure mode if it runs twice?	Idempotency validation

Step 1 — Pick the pattern

Three primary patterns. Route by the answer to "how often":

Pattern A — Cron (fixed schedule)

Use when: task runs at predictable intervals — daily at 8am, weekly on Fridays, hourly on the hour.

Tool: CronCreate — schedules a recurring task with a cron expression.

CronCreate({
  schedule: "0 8 * * *",           // daily at 8am local
  prompt: "<loop body prompt>",
  timezone: "America/Los_Angeles"
})

Common cron patterns:

• 0 8 * * * — daily at 8am
• 0 9 * * 1 — Mondays at 9am
• 0 9 * * 5 — Fridays at 9am
• 0 */2 * * * — every 2 hours
• */15 * * * * — every 15 minutes

Trade-offs:

• ✅ Predictable, human-readable, easy to reason about
• ✅ Best for time-of-day-dependent tasks (morning brief, EOD summary)
• ❌ Runs at the scheduled time even if the last run isn't done — need idempotent body
• ❌ No self-pacing — over-schedules if the task duration varies wildly

Pattern B — Dynamic pacing (self-scheduled)

Use when: task should react to state, not the clock. Monitor-until-condition-met patterns. Waiting on an external event.

Tool: ScheduleWakeup — the current run schedules its own next wake-up.

ScheduleWakeup({
  delaySeconds: 270,               // stay in cache window (< 5min)
  reason: "checking build status; sleeping under 5min to stay cache-warm",
  prompt: "<same task, re-entered>"
})

Critical delay rules (from ScheduleWakeup docs — internalized in the wizard):

Delay range	Use for	Cache impact
60s–270s	Active work — polling build, waiting for state that's about to change	Stays in 5-min prompt cache — fast + cheap
300s ❌	DON'T USE THIS	Worst of both worlds — pay cache miss without amortizing
300s–3600s	Waiting on something that takes minutes to change	Pay cache miss but justified
1200s–1800s (20–30 min)	Idle ticks with no specific signal	Default for autonomous loops

Never pick 300s literally — either drop to 270 (cache stays warm) or commit to 1200+ (cache miss buys longer wait).

Trade-offs:

• ✅ Adaptive — sleeps longer when idle, shorter when active
• ✅ Cache-optimal when tuned right
• ❌ Requires the loop body to know when to schedule next (extra logic)
• ❌ Harder to reason about when it'll run

Pattern C — One-shot loop (until-condition)

Use when: task runs until a condition is met, then stops. No recurrence after that.

Tool: /loop (built-in) with an exit condition in the prompt itself.

/loop
Check if the deploy is healthy. If yes → stop. If no → wait 5 min and check again.
Max 10 iterations. If still failing after 10, alert and stop.

Trade-offs:

• ✅ Simplest for check-until-condition
• ✅ Bounded — always eventually terminates
• ❌ Not for indefinite recurrence — that's Pattern A or B

Step 2 — Design the loop body for idempotency

Idempotent = running the loop twice produces the same result as running it once. Non-negotiable for cron and dynamic patterns because they'll fire while the previous iteration is still running or partially complete.

Idempotency patterns:

• Use "already done" markers: e.g., commit a state file <vault>/.loopify/<name>-last-run.txt with the timestamp of last successful run. Loop body checks the timestamp before doing work.
• Use dedupe keys: if the loop writes to a DB or file, key by content-hash or timestamp so re-runs are no-ops.
• Use transactions: DB writes in the loop body should be atomic — either all commit or all roll back.
• Query before mutate: check current state before applying the change. If already applied, skip.

Show the user the loop body draft, highlighting the idempotency check. If none exists, add one.

Step 3 — Bail-out condition

Every loop needs one. Options:

Bail-out	When to use
Max iterations (e.g., stop after 100 runs)	Cron loops — prevents runaway
State-based (e.g., stop when metric X drops below Y)	Monitoring loops
Time-based (e.g., stop after 24 hours)	Bounded monitoring
Error-based (e.g., stop on 3 consecutive failures)	All loops — catches degradation

If the loop is truly indefinite (e.g., a weekly cron with no end), still add a manual bail-out via CronDelete. Document it in the SKILL/loop notes so the user knows how to stop it.

Step 4 — Set the schedule

Based on the pattern from Step 1:

Cron (Pattern A):

CronCreate({
  schedule: "<expression>",
  timezone: "<tz>",
  prompt: "<loop body>",
})

Report the cron_id returned so the user can CronDelete later.

Dynamic (Pattern B): Wrap the loop body prompt so it ends with a ScheduleWakeup call:

<do the work>
Then: ScheduleWakeup({delaySeconds: <tuned per Step 1>, prompt: "<same body>", reason: "<why this cadence>"})

One-shot (Pattern C): Just run /loop <prompt with exit condition>.

On hosts other than Claude Code

CronCreate, ScheduleWakeup, and /loop are Claude Code features. Everything else in this skill (pattern choice, idempotency, bail-out, verification) applies to any agent. On other hosts, the scheduler lives outside the agent and calls a non-interactive agent run:

Scheduler	When to use
The host's own scheduled tasks, if it has them	First choice. Check the host's docs
System cron / launchd / systemd timer	Machine is always on; loop needs local files
GitHub Actions schedule:	Loop works on a repo (vault compile, upstream check); survives a closed laptop

The job runs a headless agent command with the loop body as the prompt, e.g. claude -p "<body>", codex exec "<body>", or cursor-agent -p "<body>". Use whatever non-interactive mode your agent's CLI has.

• Dynamic pacing (Pattern B) has no direct equivalent. Use a fixed schedule whose body exits early when there's nothing to do.
• One-shot (Pattern C) becomes a shell while loop around the headless command, with the bail-out check in the loop condition.
• Headless runs can't ask for approval, so give the job the narrowest permissions that work, and have it write output to a file or notification rather than waiting on a prompt.

Step 5 — Verify the first run

Wait for the first iteration (or trigger it manually via /loop with the same prompt for a dry-run). Confirm:

• Output landed where expected
• Idempotency check works (run twice — second should be a no-op)
• Bail-out condition would fire correctly if triggered
• Log/notification appears if configured

Step 6 — Report + follow-ups

Report:

• Pattern picked (A/B/C) + why
• Cron ID or wakeup pattern registered
• Bail-out condition set
• Idempotency mechanism in place
• How to stop the loop (CronDelete <cron_id> or "just don't call the wakeup" for dynamic)

Offer:

• "Save this loop configuration as a skill via skillify from-chat?"
• "Want to also register a weekly-review or daily-startup loop while we're here?"
• "Should the loop write to second-brain outputs when it runs?"

Common loop recipes

Templates for frequent loop types (fill in as they're used):

• references/daily-brief.md — morning routine loop (calendar + priorities + overnight)
• references/weekly-review.md — Friday portfolio pulse
• references/upstream-check.md — periodic check for changes to an adapted skill's upstream
• references/vault-compile.md — periodic raw/ → wiki/ compilation
• references/metric-monitor.md — poll a metric until it crosses a threshold, then alert

Composes with

• skillify — sibling in -ify trifecta. Use skillify to author a new SKILL.md — use loopify when the goal is a scheduled task, not a skill.
• toolify — sibling. Use toolify for adding an integration — use loopify when the goal is running something on top of an already-integrated tool on a schedule.
• second-brain — many loops write to the vault (raw/ or outputs/). The vault auto-commit pattern applies.
• pm — daily-brief and weekly-review loops often read from pm before generating output.

Notes on quality

• Never pick 300s for delaySeconds. Worst of both worlds. Drop to 270 or commit to 1200+.
• Every loop needs a bail-out. Even indefinite ones need a documented manual stop.
• Idempotency is non-negotiable for cron + dynamic. Assume the loop will fire twice while a previous iteration is running.
• Prefer dynamic pacing over over-frequent cron. Cron every 15 min wastes tokens if the work isn't ready; dynamic pacing scales down when idle.
• Document the cron_id. Otherwise the loop is orphaned and hard to stop.
• Log every iteration briefly — even a single line ("2026-06-30 08:00 daily-brief: ran, 3 items") makes debugging drift trivial.
• Loops that touch external APIs need rate-limit respect. If the vendor has a 100/day limit, don't schedule 500/day.
• Bounded > unbounded when uncertain. If unsure whether to run for a week or a month, start with a week — extend after seeing it work.