goal-mode-looplisted

# goal-mode-loop **English** | [中文](#中文) A small operating discipline for driving a long-running development conversation toward a single, well-defined goal — without drifting, without declaring victory too early, and without losing the thread when the context window fills up. It is **generic project-management scaffolding**: define the goal, state measurable success criteria, work in verifiable stages, checkpoint to a file, and stop deliberately. No special review or analysis technique is implied — just plain, community-standard "decide the target, make progress, prove it, write it down." ## When to use it - A task is large enough that it needs **more than a few steps** and will span a long conversation (or several). - You want the assistant to **keep going on its own** between check-ins, but stay on target and not overreach. - The context window may fill up or the session may restart, and you don't want to lose where things stand. If the task is a quick one-off, you don't need this — just do it. ## How to run the loop 1. **Set the goal.** Write one sentence: the outcome, not the activity. "Ship X so that Y works" — not "work on X". 2. **Write success criteria you can check.** Each criterion must be observable: a command that exits 0, a test that passes, a number under a threshold, a file that exists with the right content. If you cannot check it, rewrite it until you can. Vague criteria are the main reason goal-mode runs drift. 3. **Create the chec