By name: agent-loop-reliability description: Design and improve agents using a repeatable loop (context → action → verification) with practical verification patterns.
This skill is derived from: https://claude.com/blog/building-agents-with-the-claude-agent-sdk (published 2025-09-29).
Instructions
- Start every run by writing down the current objective and success criteria.
- Gather context with explicit actions (file search, logs, docs) before making changes.
- Take action in small, reversible steps; prefer tool calls or scripts over manual reasoning for deterministic work.
- Verify each step using one or more of: deterministic rules, visual validation, or an LLM-as-judge rubric.
- If the agent is stuck, change the environment (better tools, better search, stricter rules) rather than repeating the same attempt.
- After completion, capture failures as test cases and add them to an eval set.
Examples
Example: turn an unreliable task into an agent loop
Gather context: search logs for the failing module, open relevant files.
Take action: apply the smallest patch.
Verify: run unit tests and lint.
Repeat until clean.
Example: verification checklist
Use references/verification-checklist.md as a standard review rubric for UI or content output.
Templates
See:
- templates/agent-loop.md
- templates/verification-plan.md
References
See:
- references/verification-checklist.md
- references/testing-improvement-questions.md