Ralph

Overview

Plans and executes implementation work via Geoffrey Huntley's Ralph Wiggum technique: a loop where each iteration spawns a fresh Task subagent. Two modes share one loop mechanism — PLANNING generates a declarative spec, BUILDING performs gap analysis and implements toward it.

Core philosophy: Disk is memory. Each iteration gets fresh context. Spec file on disk is the single source of truth — a declarative description of the desired end state. Each build iteration performs gap analysis to autonomously determine what to do next. No context rot.

Prompt templates: Located in templates/ relative to this SKILL.md file.

When to Use

• User mentions "ralph", "ralph loop", or "ralph wiggum"
• User wants iterative implementation where each iteration starts with fresh context
• Implementation is large enough that context rot would degrade quality in a single session
• User wants to generate a declarative spec with acceptance criteria before building
• User asks for a subagent loop or autonomous iteration toward a spec

What makes Ralph distinctive: Normal implementation loads everything into one long session where context degrades over time. Ralph spawns a fresh subagent per iteration — each one reads the spec from disk, performs gap analysis, closes one gap, and exits. Disk is memory. No context rot.