Building Your First Loop on Souso

You know the primitives. You know where work enters the loop. Now we build one on a real repo.

Souso (smart-cart) is an AI meal planner deployed at souso.app. A team of seven built it at Megathon Amsterdam in less than 48 hours; three of us committed the code and merged more than 350 PRs over that weekend. It now has 50+ open GitHub issues, a ready-for-agent label queue, strict reproduce-first TDD, and a pnpm quality CI gate. We'll add a Daily Triage loop at L1 (report-only, no code changes, no risk).

By the end you'll have files in the repo and a schedule that surfaces bugs like #401 before you open GitHub.

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Clone the Example

All loop files from this post are on branch feat/loop-engineering-daily-triage (PR #529):

git clone -b feat/loop-engineering-daily-triage https://github.com/RonanCodes/smart-cart.git
cd smart-cart
pnpm install

You do not need to merge the PR to follow along. The branch has the scaffold pre-seeded; run the steps below from that checkout.

Alternatively, scaffold any repo with Cobus Greyling's upstream tooling: npx @cobusgreyling/loop-init . --pattern daily-triage (loop-engineering repo). This walkthrough adapts that layout for Souso.

Prerequisites

You need:

• Claude Code, Codex App, or Grok with scheduling (/loop or an equivalent automation)
• gh CLI logged in with read access to public issues and PRs (enough for L1)
• The checkout above (pnpm install pulls deps for skills and scripts; you do not need to run the app)

You do not need:

• Merge rights on Souso, a running dev server, or Cloudflare credentials
• To merge PR #529 (the branch is pre-seeded)

L1 triage only reads GitHub and edits loop files in the repo (STATE.md, loop-run-log.md). It never touches application source.

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What We're Building

Property	Value
Pattern	Daily Triage
Level	L1 (report-only)
Cadence	Once per day
Intake	GitHub Issues + PRs to develop
Output	STATE.md + loop-run-log.md
Code changes	None

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Step 1: Scaffold the Loop Files

The file layout follows Cobus Greyling's loop-engineering starters (MIT). We adapted denylist paths and Souso-specific rules below.

These files now live in the smart-cart repo root:

STATE.md              # Canonical loop memory
loop-run-log.md       # Append-only run history
loop-budget.md        # Token limits + denylist
LOOP.md               # Human-readable design doc
.claude/skills/loop-triage/SKILL.md

STATE.md answers three questions every run:

• What needs attention today? → High Priority
• What's scoped for an agent? → Ready for Agent
• What needs a human decision? → Waiting on Human

Starter content (already seeded with real Souso issues):

## High Priority
- #401: RangeError on /week, bug label, reproduce-first required

## Ready for Agent
- #444: Admin UX overhaul (design system)
- #428: Basket price comparison across supermarkets

## Waiting on Human
- #408: Beta-tester flow, proposal not confirmed

loop-budget.md encodes Souso-specific guardrails:

• Denylist: src/lib/pricing/*, week generation internals, migrations, auth
• Max 500k tokens/day
• L1 only, no sub-agents yet

LOOP.md documents the design so any teammate (or agent) can understand the loop without reading this blog post.

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Step 2: Write the Triage Skill

The skill at .claude/skills/loop-triage/SKILL.md is the most important file. It tells the agent what to fetch and how to report.

Souso-specific rules baked in:

1. ready-for-agent label = agent queue
2. bug label = always flag "reproduce-first required"
3. Ownership: issues touching src/lib/pricing/* get "ownership review required"
4. Structured output only: one-liners, no prose (so L2 can parse STATE.md)
5. L1 constraints: edit only STATE.md and loop-run-log.md

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Step 3: Wire the Schedule

In Claude Code, from the smart-cart checkout:

/loop 1d "Run loop-triage skill. Read STATE.md and loop-budget.md. Scan GitHub issues and develop PRs. Update STATE.md with findings. Append one row to loop-run-log.md. L1: no code changes."

Codex App alternative:

• Automations tab → new automation "Souso Daily Triage"
• Cadence: 1 day
• Prompt: same as above
• Results: Triage Inbox

Grok alternative:

/loop 1d Run loop-triage. Update STATE.md. No auto-fix.

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Step 4: Run Manually First

Before the schedule takes over:

/loop 0 "Run loop-triage once. Update STATE.md. Report findings."

Read the output. Open STATE.md. Ask:

• Did it find #401 under High Priority?
• Did it list #444 and #428 under Ready for Agent?
• Did it flag #408 as Waiting on Human?
• Did it miss anything you'd expect?

Week-one success criterion: Did the loop surface #401 before you opened GitHub? If yes, L1 is working.

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Step 5: Review After One Week

Question	What good looks like on Souso
Accuracy	Caught new bugs, didn't hallucinate closed issues
Value	You start the day reading STATE.md, not scrolling 50 issues
Format	Team can scan sections in under 60 seconds
Cost	~50k tokens/day, worth it for the signal

If accuracy is good, consider adding Issue Triage (L1) for unlabeled issues like #528. Do not jump to L2 until triage is trustworthy.

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What L2 Looks Like (Not Yet)

When you're ready, after one week of accurate L1:

1. Worktree isolation: one worktree per ready-for-agent issue
2. Implementer + verifier: verifier runs pnpm test, not vibes
3. Reproduce-first: bug fixes start with a failing test per reproduce-first-tdd skill
4. GitHub MCP write: open PRs, comment on issues; never merge
5. Max 3 attempts: then escalate to human

Example L2 scope: typo in a comment, missing import in a test file. Not #401 RangeError on first attempt; that needs human triage to confirm root cause.

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Quick Reference

# Manual run
/loop 0 "Run loop-triage once, update STATE.md"

# Daily schedule
/loop 1d "Run loop-triage skill. L1: no code changes."

# Files to check
cat STATE.md
tail loop-run-log.md

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The Most Important Thing

"Build the loop. But build it like someone who intends to stay the engineer, not just the person who presses go."

Addy Osmani

Souso has eval gates, ownership boundaries, and a promotion flow (develop → main). A loop that ignores those isn't leverage; it's liability. Start at L1. Read the output. Build trust. Then expand.

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Sources: Addy Osmani's Loop Engineering. Loop scaffold from Cobus Greyling's loop-engineering starters (MIT). Cobus Greyling's Loop Engineering essay. Souso loop example: PR #529 · feat/loop-engineering-daily-triage.