01 · The goal — what do you want built?
0 chars
Say what the finished thing has to achieve . Don’t prescribe the
stack or the architecture — that caps the result at your own imagination. There is no
length limit and nothing here is ever truncated; the field scrolls rather than pushing the page.
02 · The bar — what does good look like?
no references
Reference kind
Auto
URL
Path
Words
Reference — a URL, a path on disk, or words
Add
A bar has to be named , fetchable and comparable — something the agent can open,
run, read or screenshot and put beside its own work. Leave it empty and the prompt makes finding one round zero’s only job.
One surface, three kinds. Drop a file here — or use any of these, all keyboard-reachable:
Paste a URL
Type a path
Choose a file
Describe it in words
Upload it → https URL
Typed path The agent opens it directly — only when it runs on this machine.
Dropped file The browser hands over the name only, never the folder . Give the folder once; it is kept for next time.
Uploaded Becomes an https URL any agent can fetch, anywhere . Use this for anything shared with a team.
A URL Captured here — desktop and mobile full-page screenshots plus the page as markdown. Real pixels, or a labelled blank.
Capture · Kind · Reference · State The bar is empty.
Every reference you add rules a notch across this box — the literal string the agent is
handed, whichever of the three tests it fails, and real pixels where a capture exists.
03 · Where it runs
Claude Code
Claude Code
/effort max
Setup: one clean session — no unrelated skills or MCP servers.
Grok Build
/goal <objective> --budget N
Setup: turn goal mode on, then trust the folder or .grok/hooks/ is silently skipped.
04 · Loop strength
Gauntlet
Gauntlet
builder + blind critic
The original method. Cheap per round, nothing stops a round from breaking what the last one fixed.
Ratchet
+ regression gates
Every passed property becomes a re-runnable check. Roughly 4–8× a Gauntlet round.
Gauntlet by default on an empty brief; this line always says why, and picking a plate overrides it.
05 · Caps — optional, and you should
no caps
Leave either blank and the prompt says so in words — it tells the
run you set none on purpose and forbids it inventing one. That matters: a run whose author
left this empty expecting no limit read “set a maximum round count”, chose 8, and
stopped there. A Ratchet run needs 25–30 rounds before it earns what it costs.
Cost This family of methods routinely runs into
hundreds of dollars . A promoting Ratchet round costs roughly 5–9× a plain Gauntlet round.
Nothing here stops it but you — set a cap you are comfortable losing, and watch it.
06 · What must always be true — optional, and worth more than the rest
nothing of your own
Every other check comes from the agent reading your words. This one
does not. It runs every round and the agent may not edit it, so it is the only line in
the whole run that is yours . One sentence is enough.
One thing that must never break — and what proves it
Plain words. The agent builds whatever harness demonstrates it —
your sentence is fixed and the harness has to fit it, never the other way round.
Already included, whatever you type here. It must not log
errors, must behave the same way twice, must be reachable by keyboard, must not call out to
anyone else’s server, and must never get slower or heavier than the first round made it.
Those last two carry no number: round 0 measures what it built and that becomes the
ceiling. The agent writes down how to start the thing once it exists, and where a check
genuinely cannot apply it has to say so in writing — which you can then disagree with.
File the brief
I don’t know the bar yet
The second one writes a different, much shorter prompt: go and find
three to five real references, propose the criteria with the measurement that decides each,
propose the sealed suite, sketch what it would and would not build — then stop ,
so you can disagree before the money is spent. Cut what is wrong and bring it back here.