Design Loops Using An Employee Onboarding Mindset

Design a loop like you're onboarding an employee: define the job, schedule, and desired outcomes.
Examples: weekly EA calendar review, hourly issue triage, or goal-based PR review until lints pass.

Play episode from 09:30

chevron_right

Transcript

chevron_right

Transcript

Episode notes

I break down every loop type from scratch—what a heartbeat, cron, hook, and goal loop actually are, when each one fits, and the five things any effective loop needs before it touches production. Then I build two live loops: a daily aging-PR reviewer in Claude Code that schedules itself at 10:15 a.m. and spins off its own subagents, and a weekly skills-identification loop in Codex that spawns goal-based subagents to validate its own output in real time.

What you’ll learn:

The plain-English definition of a loop—and why it’s just an automated prompt, not a scary new paradigm
The four loop types (heartbeat, cron, hook, and goal) and when each one actually fits your workflow
How to think about loop design using the “onboarding an employee” mental model
The five things every effective loop needs: work trees, skills, plugins/connectors, subagents, and state tracking
How to build a scheduled PR-review routine in Claude Code that babysits aging PRs and alerts your team
How to set up a weekly skills-identification automation in Codex that spawns its own validating subagents
Why goal-based loops are the hardest to write well—and where most people burn tokens for nothing
The two warning signs that your loop is going to get expensive before it gets useful

—

Brought to you by:

WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready today

Runway—The creative AI platform for images, video, and more

—

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Prompts are out and loops are in

(02:30) Defining a loop

(03:03) The four ways to automate a prompt: heartbeat, cron, hooks, and goals

(06:03) Five things every effective loop needs

(09:26) The “onboarding an employee” framework for designing loops

(11:58) Live build #1: Daily aging PR loop in Claude Code