How to Get Started with the Ralph Repo

We got Ryan Carson on the pod to break down the “Ralph Wiggum” Agent and why it’s suddenly everywhere. He walks me through a simple workflow that lets an autonomous agent build a full product feature while I sleep: start with a PRD, convert it into small user stories with tight acceptance criteria, then run a looped script that ships work in clean iterations. The big idea is you’re not “vibe coding” one giant prompt—you’re giving the agent testable, bite-sized tickets and letting it execute like an engineering team. By the end, Ryan shows how this becomes repeatable (and safer) with a memory layer—agents.md for long-term notes and progress.txt for iteration-to-iteration context.

Timestamps

00:00 – Intro

02:44 – What is the Ralph Wiggum AI Agent

03:40 – Step 1: PRD Generator

06:11 – Step 2: Convert PRD to Json

09:47 – Step 3: Run Ralph

12:05 – Step 4: Ralph Picks a Task

13:14 – Step 5: Ralph Implements Task

14:49 – Tokens + Cost: What It Actually Spends

15:45 – Guardrails: Small Stories + Clear Criteria Keep It Sane

16:19 – Step 6: Ralph commits the change

16:38 – Step 7: Ralph Updates PRD json file

16:55 – Step 8: Ralph Logs to Progress txt

20:08 – Step 9: Ralph Picks another Task

20:48 – Step 10: Ralph Finishes Tasks

21:18 – Example of how Ryan uses Ralph

24:08 – How To Start Today (Ralph Repo) and Tips

Links Mentioned:

Ralph Wiggum Agent: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/Ralph-agent 
AI Agent Skills: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/amp-skills 
AMP: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/amp-code 
Ryan’s Ralph Step-by-Step Guide: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/Ryans-Ralph-Guide

Key Points

• I can’t expect “sleep-shipping” unless I translate the feature into small, testable user stories with clear acceptance criteria.

• Ralph works like a Kanban loop: pull one story, implement, commit, mark pass/fail, then grab the next.

• The real leverage is the reset: each iteration starts fresh with a clean context window, instead of one giant, messy thread.

• agents.md becomes long-term memory across the repo; progress.txt is short-term memory across iterations.

• The bottleneck isn’t “coding”—it’s the upfront spec quality: PRD clarity, atomic stories, and verifiable criteria.

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FIND ME ON SOCIAL

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FIND RYAN ON SOCIAL:

X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryancarson

Amp: https://ampcode.com