Ratchet
Loop.

Don’t name the tools or how to build it — that limits the result to what you already thought of. Write as much as you like: nothing is ever cut, and the box scrolls instead of pushing the page down.

That has bitten someone: they left this empty expecting no limit, the run read “set a maximum round count”, picked 8, and stopped there. That 8 came out of a cautionary sentence in the prompt that happened to name it, so the number this field carries has to be yours.

Cost These runs can reach hundreds of dollars. Nothing here stops that but you — set a cap you can afford to lose, and keep an eye on it.

What a token limit actually does. It does not squeeze the work into the budget. The run goes at full speed and stops when the money is gone — so you get fewer improvements, not a half-built thing. The prompt tells it to stop before starting a round it cannot afford to finish, and to hand you the best version it reached with a note saying it ran out rather than finished.

This one it cannot touch or reword. It runs every round exactly as you wrote it, which makes it the only part of the run that is entirely yours. One sentence is enough.

Plain words. The agent works out how to test it — your sentence stays exactly as written, and the test has to fit it, never the other way round.

Every kit also carries checks for errors, repeatability, keyboard access, and unexpected third-party calls. The binding checks can reject a candidate in Duel and Ratchet. Speed and transfer size are measured against round zero but are advisory: the judges decide whether an increase earns its cost. Gauntlet carries findings to its critic rather than using a gate. A check that cannot run is reported as unrunnable, never as a pass; an inapplicable check needs a written reason.