Autonomous AI coding loop — reads PRDs, implements stories, reviews, commits, and creates PRs.
What It Does
Ralph is an autonomous coding engine built in Zsh. It reads Product Requirement Documents (PRDs), spawns fresh Claude Code sessions for each story, implements the changes, runs CodeRabbit review, and commits on success. It's how most of the Golems ecosystem was built.
Core Loop
while stories remain:
spawn fresh Claude Code session
read story from prd-json/
implement all acceptance criteria
run CodeRabbit review
if review passes: commit
if review fails: create BUG story
done
Key Commands
| Command | Purpose |
|---|---|
ralph N | Run N story iterations |
ralph -G | Use Gemini mode |
ralph -ui | Launch React Ink dashboard |
ralph --prd path/ | Use a specific PRD directory |
Skills Library
The ecosystem includes 57 reusable Claude Code skills in skills/golem-powers/. These are installable as Claude Code plugins and cover:
- Development: commit, create-pr, worktrees, test-plan, lsp
- Operations: railway, 1password, convex, github
- Content: linkedin-post, content, writing-skills
- Research: context7, github-research, cli-agents
- Quality: coderabbit, critique-waves, pr-comments
- Memory: brainlayer, catchup, learn-mistake
See the Skills Library page for the full catalog.
PRD Format
Stories are JSON files with structured acceptance criteria:
{
"id": "US-001",
"title": "Add email scoring",
"criteria": [
{ "text": "Score emails 1-10 using LLM", "files": ["src/email/scorer.ts"] },
{ "text": "Run CodeRabbit review - must pass" },
{ "text": "Commit: feat: US-001 add email scoring" }
]
}Every story's last two criteria are always:
- CodeRabbit review (must pass)
- Commit with conventional message
Architecture
Ralph is invoked via the ralph-commit skill or the golems CLI. Skills live at the monorepo root in skills/golem-powers/ (55 skills).
What Ralph Built
Ralph was responsible for landing 259+ PRs with 497+ commits and 40,000+ lines of code — all written by Claude Code, orchestrated by Ralph's autonomous loop.