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Loop Engineering: Version-Bound, Evidence-Gated Coordination for Production Coding Agents

Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Coding agents can edit repositories and execute tests, yet production software work extends far beyond code generation. It requires durable task context, scoped authority, version-aware approval, source-independent verification, interruption recovery, and accountable handoffs between humans and automated workers. We present Loop Engineering, a method for operating multiple asynchronous agent loops over shared, auditable repository state without relying on private conversational handoffs. Each loop is specified by six elements: a trigger, a context projection, an authority boundary, a verifier, a stop condition, and a write-back rule. Versioned procedural contracts, called Skills, encode reusable operating policy; a Harness bounds the available action surface and collects evidence; human gates authorize high-consequence transitions against exact artifact versions. We report a design-and-experience study from MewDesign, a revenue-generating commercial AI design product. Five specialized loops cover planning, scoped implementation, review, test release, and reconciliation. A cross-sectional audit contains 50 durable marker records across 26 GitHub work items. Five pull requests reached a version-bound test lock: three proceeded to test releases with runtime evidence from sources distinct from the deployment request, and two stopped before merge. A detailed drift episode shows one observed fail-closed path: a new commit invalidated prior approval and evidence, and the workflow refused to reuse stale continuous-integration results. The study is not a controlled benchmark and does not establish causal productivity or general safety. It provides early evidence of feasibility, traceability, and bounded progression in one production setting.
Language: English
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7170173827
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