{"slug": "agent-rigor-stop-your-ai-coding-assistant-from-doom-looping", "title": "Agent Rigor – Stop your AI coding assistant from doom-looping", "summary": "Agent Rigor, a new open-source framework, provides a structured multi-layer progressive disclosure system to prevent AI coding agents from entering 'doom loops' and other failure modes. The framework enforces empirical discipline through mandatory protocols, verification gates, and anti-rationalization safeguards, and is platform-agnostic, working with Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, and other tools.", "body_md": "**Strict empirical discipline for your AI coding assistant.**\n\n*Stop watching your AI agent code itself into a corner. Give it discipline.*\n\nMost AI coding agents fail not because they lack intelligence, but because they lack **discipline**. When left to their own devices, they:\n\n- ❌ Skip planning and jump straight to implementation.\n- ❌ Write plausible-looking code that doesn't actually work.\n- ❌ Get trapped in \"doom loops\" (fix-forward spirals).\n- ❌ Forget what they learned between sessions (context amnesia).\n- ❌ Suffer from \"context rot\" by loading too many instructions at once.\n\n**Agent Rigor solves this.** It provides a structured, multi-layer progressive disclosure framework: a set of mandatory protocols, verification gates, and anti-rationalization safeguards that force empirical discipline at every step.\n\n**Actionable Protocols**: Every instruction is a verifiable step with exit criteria, not an essay.** Empirical Sovereignty**: Claims require evidence. \"Seems right\" is never sufficient.** Atomic State Transitions**: The codebase moves between known-good states. Broken states are never committed.** Anti-Rationalization**: Every skill actively anticipates and rebuts the excuses agents use to skip discipline.** Progressive Disclosure**: The agent reads only the files it needs for the current phase, saving tokens and preventing instruction neglect.\n\nThe system is organized into a robust 3-tier hierarchy using **Progressive Disclosure** to prevent context window collapse.\n\n**L1: Apex Kernel (**: Always-on routing and non-negotiable laws.`SYSTEM_CORE.md`\n\n)**L2: Phase Directors (**: Just-in-time orchestration loaded only when entering a phase.`00_PHASE_DIRECTOR.md`\n\n)**L3: Skill Protocols (**: Deep execution guidelines loaded`skills/*.md`\n\n)*only*when requested by the Director.\n\n``` php\ngraph TD\n    A[Phase 1: Mission Synthesis] -->|PLAN.md| B(Phase 2: Execution Engine)\n    B -->|Committed Code| C{Phase 3: Verification Matrix}\n    C -->|CRITICAL Findings| B\n    C -->|Zero Findings| D[Phase 4: Cognitive Persistence]\n    D -->|Context Snapshot| A\n    \n    subgraph Phase 6: Adaptive Protocols\n    Z[Self-Correction / Scope Defense / Consolidation]\n    end\n    \n    B -.->|3-Strike Failure| Z\n    Z -.->|Recovery| B\n```\n\n| Phase | Purpose | Key Skills |\n|---|---|---|\n01. Mission Synthesis |\nRequirements & Planning | Requirement Distillation, Strategic Decomposition |\n02. Execution Engine |\nImplementation & Testing | Convergent Iteration, State Checkpointing |\n03. Verification Matrix |\nQuality & Review Gates | Pentagonal Audit, Entropy Reduction |\n04. Cognitive Persistence |\nMemory & Knowledge | Context Lifecycle, Structural Cartography |\n05. Interface Protocols |\nSafe Environment Interaction | Bounded Observation, Semantic Navigation |\n06. Adaptive Protocols |\nThe Immune System | Recursive Self-Correction, Scope Containment |\n\nGet Agent Rigor working in your project in under 2 minutes.\n\nRun the installation script in your project root:\n\n```\ncurl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MeherBhaskar/agent-rigor/main/install.sh | bash\n```\n\n*(Alternatively, clone this repo into an .agents/ directory).*\n\nSimply prompt your agent with:\n\n\"I need to build [feature]. Read\n\n`.agents/SYSTEM_CORE.md`\n\nand begin Phase 1 (Mission Synthesis).\"\n\nThe agent will automatically read the Phase 1 Director, create a `PLAN.md`\n\n, and orchestrate its own work through implementation, review, and context saving.\n\nAgent Rigor is pure markdown and **platform-agnostic**. It works natively with:\n\n| Agent / IDE | Integration Method |\n|---|---|\nCursor |\nPoint to `.agents/SYSTEM_CORE.md` in your `.cursorrules` or `.mdc` files. |\nClaude Code |\nInclude a reference in your `CLAUDE.md` . |\nGitHub Copilot |\nReference in `.github/copilot-instructions.md` . |\nGemini CLI / Antigravity |\nInclude in `.agents/AGENTS.md` . |\nAider |\nPass via `--read .agents/SYSTEM_CORE.md` . |\n\n*See the *\n\n`examples/`\n\nfolder for ready-to-use configuration templates.We welcome contributions to make agents smarter and more disciplined!\nPlease see our [Contributing Guidelines](/MeherBhaskar/agent-rigor/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md) to understand how to design skills that agents actually follow.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/agent-rigor-stop-your-ai-coding-assistant-from-doom-looping", "canonical_source": "https://github.com/MeherBhaskar/agent-rigor", "published_at": "2026-06-20 18:10:50+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-20 18:37:34.086669+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "developer-tools", "ai-tools", "ai-safety", "large-language-models"], "entities": ["Agent Rigor", "Cursor", "Claude Code", "GitHub Copilot", "Gemini CLI", "Aider"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/agent-rigor-stop-your-ai-coding-assistant-from-doom-looping", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/agent-rigor-stop-your-ai-coding-assistant-from-doom-looping.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/agent-rigor-stop-your-ai-coding-assistant-from-doom-looping.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/agent-rigor-stop-your-ai-coding-assistant-from-doom-looping.jsonld"}}